


Be My Light

by fractalgeometry



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Relationship, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, M/M, POV Alternating, Partnership, Post-Canon, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Rescue, Sensory Deprivation, Solitary Confinement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26699011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalgeometry/pseuds/fractalgeometry
Summary: Aziraphale has a headache. Heaven has a vendetta. Crowley is very not okay with his angel disappearing without warning. Neither he nor Aziraphale like the dark, or the idea of spending unknown amounts of time away from Earth against their will. Clearly, they have to get back to normal.The problem is,how?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 196
Kudos: 130
Collections: Hurt Aziraphale





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the longest fanfic I’ve ever written, by nearly four times. The best part is I didn’t initially intend to write it. The idea was vaguely inspired by a somewhat bizarre dream I had one night, thought _this would make a good fic,_ woke up and decided it wouldn’t. To get the idea out of my head, I word-dumped my idea to the Ace Omens discord, who (and I really should have predicted this) badgered me to write it. So I blame them for the existence of this whole fic. Long story short, I started writing, realized that with some changes it definitely does work as a story, and 22k words and ten of the most intensive writing days of my life (followed by some much slower editing ones), this showed up. I like this story very, very much, and I’m incredibly excited to share it. I’m planning to post a new chapter every other day until they’re all up.

“Thank you, my dear.” Aziraphale collected the slightly greasy paper bag from the counter and smiled at the cashier of his third-favorite small bakery. “You have a lovely day.”

“You too!” she chirped.

Aziraphale heard her greet the next customer as he pushed open the door and stepped out onto the busy street. The headache that had been niggling at him all afternoon seemed to up its intensity another notch. He sighed a little, and let the smile drop partway off his face. It would be nice to get home and settle in with a pastry and a cup of tea, and hopefully a demon to snuggle. 

He wound his way through the familiar crowded streets, cutting through an alley or two to make the trip shorter. He did like London, but everything was feeling a bit much. Perhaps he had been out for too long.

The headache worsened again, and Aziraphale suppressed a grimace. It was, now that he thought about it, a little odd that his head was bothering him so much. He had gotten headaches before, of course — it was a side effect of spending so much time in a human-based corporation — but he was fairly certain he had always been able to miracle them better. This one was strangely persistent. 

A sharp jolt of pain shot through his head, and he stumbled into the wall of the nearest building, leaning on it heavily and trying to collect his thoughts. The only one that he could get a solid grasp on — aside from  _ ouch _ — was  _ Something is very wrong here. _

It was only a few more minutes to the bookshop. He ought to be able to get there, behind his wards, and- and figure something out.

He winced and closed his eyes, just for a moment. Just to gather some focus before he pressed on home. The paper bag crumpled in his hands as he gripped it tighter. Oh dear. Eclairs really never were as good if they’d been squished.

Then the pain grew again, until he couldn’t have opened his eyes if he’d tried, and he felt the wall behind him fade from his consciousness. His legs buckled, and he landed on the ground. 

Only — this wasn’t the rough, damp ground of the alley. It was perfectly smooth, and cool, and a specific kind of almost-but-not-quite substantial that he had only felt one place, but was really quite familiar with.

The last thing he thought, before he lost all sense of his surroundings, was,  _ Oh dear indeed. _

~

“Get  _ up.” _

Something poked Aziraphale in the side. He tensed automatically, then wished he had thought to pretend he wasn’t awake, like people did in books. At least his head didn’t hurt quite so terribly anymore. 

“You really aren’t very good at pretending, are you, Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale recognized that voice, and then wished he didn’t. If he didn’t know who was talking, he could pretend that he wasn’t where he knew he was. At this point, though, his only option was to figure out  _ why _ he was there. 

He reluctantly opened his eyes, and bit the inside of his lip against the way the bright whiteness of his surroundings aggravated his head. Deciding not to look up to see the owner of the shining black shoes directly beside him, he moved a little to the side and began to stand up. 

No one stopped him. As he became more upright, he almost wished they  _ had. _ The headache, though far from the blinding pain it had been a few minutes earlier, was still worse than it had been all day, and standing up was more of a task than he had anticipated. It wasn’t as though he was going to sit back down, though. Not in an unknown room in Heaven, surrounded by an unknown number of angels, who had clearly brought him here for a reason. 

“Heyyy,” Gabriel said, smiling his usual, overly friendly smile. “What a surprise!”

“I don’t think it is, actually,” Aziraphale said.

“What?”

“A surprise,” Aziraphale clarified.

“You always were too smart for your own good,” Gabriel said.

Aziraphale swallowed and stayed silent. He was in no condition to upset Gabriel right now. Instead he looked around the room, only half-managing to resist the urge to squint at the brightness. The other archangels stood a few feet behind Gabriel, and arrayed behind and to the sides of them were ten or fifteen other angels. All of them were looking directly at Aziraphale. 

“Let me guess, you’re wondering why you’re here,” Gabriel said.

“Yes, actually,” Aziraphale replied. “I would have appreciated a bit of warning.”

“And why,” Gabriel wondered, his tone still far friendlier than his words, “would we have done that? You might have forgotten what happened the last time you were here. We haven’t.”

Aziraphale decided not to try to find an answer for that. Silence seemed like his best option at the moment anyway. 

“So,” Gabriel continued, and goodness, Aziraphale was really beginning to wish that one of the others would speak, instead of staring at him silently, “we’ve set up a special spot just for you.”

That sounded very concerning indeed.

“See?” Gabriel finished, gesturing to something behind Aziraphale.

Aziraphale really didn’t want to turn his back on all the angels. On the other hand, he was realizing that he hadn’t actually looked behind him yet, and there could be more angels back there. He did, he decided, have to know as much about his surroundings as possible. 

He turned.

There were no angels behind him. There was just an expanse of white wall and floor, and in the middle of it, a dark hole. The darkness looked shockingly out of place amid the overwhelming bright of Heaven, and Aziraphale stared at it for a long moment, feeling the dread in his chest grow ever larger. 

“What,” he asked finally, “is that?”

“How about you go find out?” Gabriel said.

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”

There was a faint rumble, the kind of noise only made by beings who are carefully regulating how much noise they make. When Aziraphale turned back, the rest of the archangels were standing beside Gabriel, and several of the other angels were even closer.

“How about. You go find out,” Gabriel repeated.

Aziraphale hesitated. Then he took a small step toward the hole.

The angels followed.

Aziraphale took another step. Then another. He could almost feel the grim presence of the other angels, warning him not to stray away from whatever they had planned for him. He wished intensely that he could think clearly enough to find out more, or escape, or even just beg mercy, but he couldn’t. He was fairly certain that if he tried to do a single miracle he’d fall over, and that would undoubtedly make things worse.

He stopped a few feet from the edge, unwilling to go farther without trying  _ something. _

“What’s all this about?” he asked, a touch desperately. 

“What do you think?” Uriel asked calmly. “Letting a traitor walk free isn’t such a good idea, don’t you think?”

“But we- I wasn’t hurting anything!” Aziraphale protested. “Just let me go back and I won’t bother you anymore.”

“Misdeeds must be punished,” Gabriel said. “We’re giving you a chance to pay penance here, Aziraphale. Maybe in a few thousand years you’ll be back on the right track.”

“A few-” Aziraphale began, shocked. He made himself stop before he finished the sentence. Anything he could say would only make it worse. 

“Go on,” Uriel said.

Aziraphale had no recourse. He had no reserves, no abilities. Whatever they had done to bring him here, it was still making his head hurt terribly. He was briefly proud to have kept his feet for so long. 

He took another, reluctant step toward the unknown pit. 

Would he really be here for thousands of years? Only an hour ago he had been making plans for a quiet afternoon at home, and now he was facing untold amounts of time in Heaven, serving some unknown penance.

There was no way out. The others would overpower him in an instant if he tried anything, and it would only get worse from there.

He took another step.

Crowley. Crowley would notice he was gone. Would he figure out what happened? Would he try to rescue Aziraphale? He couldn’t, of course he couldn’t. Aziraphale could only hope that Crowley would understand it was hopeless and run far away, keep himself safe.

One more step. Another step of that size would take him into whatever Heaven had planned for him. 

Crowley ought to run. But Aziraphale hoped, in this moment, that he would somehow find out what had happened and fix it. 

_ I don’t want to be gone for thousands of years. Oh, Crowley, I don’t want to leave you. _

He stared at the angels, arrayed a few feet in front of him. He couldn’t. He couldn’t just walk into whatever this was like he was still a good little soldier of Heaven. Had he learned nothing? What would Crowley say? 

He stayed where he was. 

“Get  _ on _ with it,” Gabriel said, and oh, there was the annoyance. 

“I don’t even know what’s down there,” Aziraphale pointed out. His voice was shaking. Bother.

“Only one way to find out.”

Of course there was. Aziraphale hated this, this illusion of choice. He had to make the move, take the last step off the edge. 

His head throbbed. He couldn’t stay standing much longer, if it didn’t let up. Even more illusion of choice. There was only one option.

He glared at the assembled angels as well as he could. Then he turned toward the strange, dark hole, and jumped.

~

There was light outside Crowley’s eyelids. Hot and bright, like direct sunlight. He groaned and turned his head to bury it in his pillow. His feet knocked against something hard as he stretched, and he sighed, waking up a little further. 

Now that his brain was coming further online, he realized that the bed didn’t have anything hard at the bottom, nor was this pillow his usual one. Oh. He was on the sofa. Why was he sleeping on the sofa?

He squinted his eyes open and looked around. The bookshop looked like it always did, dusty and piled with books. His sunglasses lay on the side table where he had put them when he got home. He was also clearly alone in the area. Odd. Maybe Aziraphale had gone to make tea or something.

“Aziraphale?” he called.

No answer. 

Crowley blinked a little more emphatically and pushed himself up, shreds of sleepiness dissipating. Now that he thought about it, why was he asleep on the sofa? The light coming through the window said it was morning, which meant he had slept through at least one night. Had Aziraphale come home and not woken him? That would be strange, but not impossible, if Aziraphale had had a particularly interesting book to read. 

Carefully not panicking — there was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for this — he swung his legs off the sofa and stood up. 

“Aziraphale?” he tried again.

Silence. 

The not-panic grew a notch. Crowley squashed it and wandered — rather quickly — into the rows of shelves.

~

Aziraphale was not in the bookshop. It was also definitely morning, which meant that either Aziraphale had come home, not woken Crowley, and then gone out again, or something had gone wrong while he was out the day before. 

The last and most damning piece of evidence, which Crowley had been very carefully trying not to look for until now, was that he couldn’t sense Aziraphale. He wasn’t close by, or even, it seemed, in London. 

Crowley leaned hard against a bookshelf, trying to keep his breathing steady. Standing in the bookshop with no Aziraphale and no sign of Aziraphale was giving him a very unpleasant version of deja vu, and he needed to not let that cloud his judgment. 

At least there were no flames around. 

Crowley pushed himself away from the bookcase, snatched his sunglasses off the table, and made a beeline for the Bentley. Maybe if he could figure out where Aziraphale had been most recently, he could find him. 

Despite the increasingly tumultuous state of his thoughts, Crowley made sure to be gentle as he closed the bookshop door.

~

For a split second Aziraphale was falling — not Falling, he was fairly certain that would be even more unpleasant — but moving downward through the air at a very fast and decidedly uncontrolled pace. Then he hit something hard and steeply sloped and slid farther down. The opening he had come through lent a faint light to his surroundings, but faded the farther he went. He tried to slow his descent, catch a finger or toehold on the surface he was sliding on, but each time he slipped off.

After what felt like a very long time, he landed, none too gently, on a flat surface that was somehow soft and hard at the same time. 

“Ow,” he said automatically. His voice sounded small and pitiful to his ears, and he hoped that the angels above him hadn’t heard it. 

“That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?” Gabriel’s voice was far away, but his condescending tone was still perfectly clear. 

Aziraphale didn’t reply. He didn’t trust his voice not to shake, and he refused to give them the satisfaction of hearing it. Instead he lay where he had landed, trying to breathe and wishing the headache would just go away already. While he was wishing, he also wished that he knew what was going to happen next, and what, exactly, Heaven’s plan for him was this time. 

“Okay, be like that,” Gabriel said. He sounded annoyed, and Aziraphale automatically opened his mouth to say something in his defense, to try to calm Gabriel down and keep blame away from himself, but stopped before the words left his mouth. 

“You have plenty of time to come around,” Gabriel called down. “Years and years. Maybe someone will even check on you once in a while, to see if you have anything to say.”

Aziraphale ignored him, instead pushing himself up to sit and trying to get a look at his prison in the dim light that made its way down the impossibly long tunnel. It didn’t  _ look _ very big, but the edges faded into darkness in such a way that he couldn’t tell if they were actually walls or just more eerie nothingness. He wished he had the strength to stand up and get an actual look around, but such strength did not seem to be forthcoming. He could crawl, he supposed, but he didn’t really want to do so in front of any of the angels who might be looking down right now.

Was this their plan? Throw him in a semi-magical pit and leave him there, like an animal in a trap? Laugh at him? Bring other angels to see him, as a warning? He wasn’t sure he could stand it.

He heard voices above him, quiet enough he couldn’t catch what they were saying. They must be talking to each other now. He wondered what they were talking about. Wondered, briefly, if there was any cover in this place. He didn’t fancy being at the bottom of a pit when someone decided to throw something else down.

Even if he  _ had _ been up to moving, it probably wouldn’t be worth it. This place had clearly been designed as a prison, and he didn’t think whoever made it would be the type to give their prisoners convenient cover from the opening above. 

Prisoner. He  _ was _ a prisoner, he supposed. This was no punishment, like he had gotten when he worked for Heaven. He had told them to stay away from him. Cut ties. They had brought him back, against his will, and trapped him here. The thought made him shiver. 

The voices died away, and as abruptly as if someone had switched it off, the light went out. Aziraphale gasped in spite of himself. 

_ Easy, _ he told himself.  _ Just take a moment to adjust. It’ll be all right. _

His vision stayed black. Was he having a breakdown? Were his senses disappearing under stress? He had excellent night vision; far better than humans’. He ought to be able to see. 

Minutes passed. At least, Aziraphale was fairly certain they did. If his mind was malfunctioning due to stress, his time sense might be off. 

No shadows poked out of the gloom to reassure him. Just black, black, black.

“Hello?” he called finally, unable to hold back any longer. “Hello? Gabriel? Michael?”

Silence, as heavy and terrifying as the blackness. 

Aziraphale brought a hand up and touched his ears, one, then the other. They felt normal. He carefully moved the hand to his face, running it along his cheek until he reached the corner of his eye, then farther, feeling the space between the lids. Open. His eyes were open, just like he thought. So why couldn’t he see? 

Aziraphale started to shake. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t been shaking already; perhaps he was so out of it so as to forget. He was alone, and it was dark, and silent, and everything was very, very wrong.

He forced himself to breathe, though the shaking certainly didn’t seem about to stop. What  _ wasn’t _ wrong? Go through the list. There had to be something. He had heard his own voice when he spoke, coming through his ears. He could still feel his hand when he touched his face. Something of him was still there. Whatever Heaven was doing, he wasn’t going to go easily.

Years. Thousands of years, Gabriel had said. Where had he even been thousands of years ago? So much had happened he could hardly remember.  _ That _ certainly wouldn’t be a problem if he spent the next few thousand down here. 

Rome. Rome was nearly two thousand years ago. He had only to last that long, maybe. Thousands, though. Thousands could be anything. Maybe back to the Ark. Maybe back to Eden, or before. 

_ Maybe someone will even check on you once in a while, _ Gabriel said in his memory. What if they didn’t? What if they forgot? What if no one ever let him out?

Aziraphale took a shuddering breath. He would not cry. Not here, not without knowing who was watching. Maybe the blackness was all in his head, and they were still up there, looking down at him, waiting to see him break. He wouldn’t. 

What would Crowley think when Aziraphale didn’t come home? He would look for Aziraphale, of course he would. What would he find? Would he realize there was no way to bring Aziraphale back? Would he move on? Would he wait? Only, he had to stay safe. Aziraphale needed Crowley to be safe.

Aziraphale thought of Rome again, and the various expressions on Crowley’s face when Aziraphale showed up, as they ate together, drank together. Someday he would see that face again. He had to. 

Thousands of years. It might as well have been an eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, it’s sad. The beginning of this fic is some of the saddest I’ve ever written, in my opinion. The “happy ending” tag is there for a reason, though, so never fear! (I mean. Fear a little bit. I’m liking the being-an-evil-writer thing. The fear won’t have to last too long, though.) And do let me know what you think in the comments! I’ve poured a lot into this story and I’d really, really love to hear people’s reactions.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale had been in many a dark place before. Some he had chosen to come to, others had happened on accident. Even in the darkest of them, though, there had been shadows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for the second chapter! This is around where I started to realize this fic was going to be more than a oneshot. It just kept growing.

Crowley threw himself into the Bentley and slammed his hands onto the steering wheel. After a moment’s consideration, he banged his head down between them. 

“Blasted,  _ stupid-” _ he growled at no one in particular. 

Well, no, that wasn’t true. He was speaking to whoever — or whatever — had made Aziraphale disappear off the face of the Earth, or at least the part of it Crowley could sense without knocking himself out for a week. He didn’t have a week. He wasn’t even sure he had the seven hours he had already spent trying to find some lead,  _ any _ lead, be it human intel or magical residue or something else he hadn’t even thought of yet. 

If only he knew where Aziraphale had been going yesterday. He hadn’t asked, and Aziraphale hadn’t ventured the information. They spent most of their time together these days, but neither felt the need to keep each other updated on their exact plans all the time. Aziraphale had gone out, said he’d be back in the afternoon, and that had been that. 

At least, it had been until Crowley found himself with an urgent need to find where Aziraphale had gone and no Aziraphale to help him with the puzzle. He’d been working his way through all the places he could remember Aziraphale liking, asking cashiers and waitresses all over London if they’d seen him any time recently. None had, except for one that said yes, around three days ago, but since Crowley had seen Aziraphale far more recently than that, it hadn’t been a helpful lead. 

Now he sat with his head pressed against the Bentley’s steering wheel, frustrated and angry and, he finally had to admit, scared out of his mind. He held fast to the hope that Aziraphale had been spirited away by some human kidnappers who happened to have the ability to keep hold of an angel. That would be bad, but they could deal with it. The other options — the more likely options — those were what terrified him. Their safety came from Heaven and Hell avoiding them. If that changed…

“Fuck,” he said succinctly. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck. Damn. Okay. Next. What’s next.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose before blowing it out gustily through his mouth. 

“Tina’s,” he said to the empty car. “Sandwich shop.”

He slapped the wheel again, pushed his head up, and started the engine. 

~

Tina’s Sandwiches yielded no useful information, nor did the next four places he tried. Crowley was becoming more and more tempted to give up and go find somewhere where he could shout and scream and rail against the injustice of it all, but he reined in the impulse. This wasn’t about him, not really. This was about Aziraphale, who would never have up and left like this without at least mentioning that he was going somewhere. 

At least, Crowley didn’t think he would. Their lives were more and more intertwined these days, but what if Aziraphale was just off in Germany or somewhere, getting more books, and had forgotten to mention it? Or really, what if he wanted a break, some time off on his own, and here Crowley was tearing London apart to find him? What if Aziraphale didn’t  _ want _ to be found?

No. If Aziraphale wanted time to himself, he could damn well say so. Crowley was going to find Aziraphale, and he was going to make sure he was safe, and then if Aziraphale had his own thing to do, he could go do it. There were too many ways that something could have gone wrong for Crowley to just ignore this disappearance.

_ And if he’s angry with you for chasing him down? _ the voice in his head asked.  _ If he looks at you all disappointed-like, and- _

“Shut  _ up,” _ Crowley said emphatically, and swerved around a pedestrian.

~

It was dark. It was so very, very dark. Aziraphale rubbed at his eyes until he was afraid he’d hurt them, but he still couldn’t see anything. He waved a hand in front of his face — at least, he thought it was in front of his face — and saw nothing. Not even a faint shadow of movement. Then he tried bringing his hand closer and closer, wondering if his sense of space was off somehow, but his palm connected with his nose right when he expected it to. 

And he still couldn’t see it. 

Aziraphale had been in many a dark place before. Some he had chosen to come to, others had happened on accident. Even in the darkest of them, though, there had been shadows. Nothing like this endless, inky black. 

He sat curled against the wall — the side of the pit? — where he had landed. The fact that he could still feel his hands when he touched them to other parts of his body and that — he thought — he could hear himself speak were arguments against the blindness being inside his own head. That was good. He would really rather not have that sort of panic attack right now. 

The possibility was still squarely on the table, but he seemed to be erring on the side of terror and intermittent shakes at the moment, which was, given the options, better than it could be. The headache was even beginning to let up, which would have been more of a relief if it were anywhere near the top of his list of current worries. It  _ was _ nice to be in less pain, at least. 

Aziraphale took a deep breath, surprised in spite of himself at how shaky it sounded. He was all right. He could do this. He would not give the archangels — and whoever else was involved in this — the satisfaction of seeing him go mad down here. 

He pressed a hand to the strange, not-soft, not-hard floor and tucked his feet under him, rising to a sort of half-squat. It was strange to move in such complete darkness, but his head didn’t protest too much, and he was fairly certain he could stand fully if he put his mind to it. He needed to explore, and he  _ would not _ crawl. He was beginning to believe that there really might be no one looking down into his prison anymore, but he had to keep his dignity, just in case.

Carefully, leaning against the wall, he rose to his feet. His legs seemed strong enough. He reached down to run a hand over his thighs, just to feel that they were still solid and real. It felt almost as though he could lose them, down here, but no, his touch registered just like usual. At least the rest of his body could function just fine in the dark. 

“All right,” he murmured, voice sounding loud and simultaneously comforting in the stillness. “We’re just going to take a walk here and see what’s going on. Learn our surroundings.”

He wondered if he ought to feel foolish, talking to himself this way, but the only feeling his voice gave him was relief. It was encouraging to hear that he sounded the same as always — perhaps a little tired, and a little wobbly, but normal enough. 

He took a cautious step. The ground stayed solid under his feet. He took another step, then another, trailing his fingers along the wall to his left. He rather thought that if he got lost in the middle without a wall he might truly have that panic attack, and was quite keen on avoiding it. 

He moved slowly, testing each step before he took it, not fully trusting whatever it was he was walking on. He wasn’t in Heaven, quite, and it certainly wasn’t Hell, but this space clearly didn’t belong on Earth either. It was something different, and Aziraphale found that almost as frightening as the blinding darkness. 

On he walked, for what felt like several minutes, and he didn’t find a corner or intersection of walls anywhere. It was as though he was walking endlessly forward, into the depths of whatever this place was. If he went too far, would anyone even be able to find him when they looked back in? What if he got lost and could  _ never _ get out?

He shivered and ended up leaning against the wall, trying to decide whether to go back or continue on. If he went back, would he even be able to find the place under the opening? Or would he wander too far in the opposite direction and get lost there? Was it even worth trying to figure out what the best option was?

He pushed himself away from the wall and continued on his path, hoping against hope that he would find another wall after the next step, or the next, or maybe the next. 

The blackness pressed in. 

The wall stretched on.

~

The sky was dark. Crowley noticed this abstractly, and thought nothing of it. He’d been sleeping at night more often these days, but if there was one thing he didn’t feel like doing right now, it was sleeping. Instead he parked the Bentley yet again and made his way to the door of the next shop he wanted to ask at.

It was closed. 

Right. Humans  _ had _ to sleep, and most of them did it at night. He wasn’t going to be able to do this all night, because there wouldn’t be anyone to talk to. 

Fine. He’d start checking parks.

Two hours later, he was out of parks to look in and it was so solidly the middle of the night that nothing but 24-hour Tescos and some nightclubs would be open, neither of which were things where Aziraphale was likely to have been the day before. Two days before. A day and a half before. 

Crowley drove back to the bookshop and went inside. 

“Aziraphale?” he called again.  _ Please, let Aziraphale be home and safe, coming out of the back room and asking where Crowley had been, let all of this be for nothing. _

Silence.

Crowley pulled his glasses off and threw them on the table, then dropped to the sofa and buried his face in his hands. If he were feeling like this with Aziraphale around, Crowley might have cried, latched onto Aziraphale and let the angel hold him and pet his hair and remind him that it was all okay, there was no need to be afraid, they were safe now. 

But Aziraphale wasn’t there, and they clearly weren’t safe, so Crowley did not cry. He just sat there, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to breathe, because the alternative was either breaking something or crying anyway, and neither of those were acceptable options. 

He wanted a drink. The last time he lost Aziraphale, he had gone and gotten completely drunk in a bar, and it had almost helped. 

The last time he lost Aziraphale, the world had been ending. Funny how the feeling was almost the same now.

He wanted a drink, because it had almost helped before, but he wasn’t going to get one. He was going to stay sober, and in possession of his faculties, because there was something different this time, and that something different was that he wouldn’t give up. Crowley had lost Aziraphale once. He would  _ not _ do it again. 

Apparently determination didn’t make it hurt any less.

~

Aziraphale’s hand met empty space.

He froze. Then, carefully, he extended his arm, feeling around for the wall. 

It wasn’t there. It had just- ended.

He slid his left foot in the same direction, carefully, carefully. A hallway? Maybe it was a hallway.

His foot met empty air, so abruptly that he lost his balance and nearly fell into whatever wasn’t there. Instead he yelped and threw himself to the other side, landing on blessedly solid — or almost solid — ground. No more unknown holes. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. 

He stayed there for several long minutes. It might have been longer. He could feel his grip on time weakening the longer he spent down here. Had it been days yet? Only hours? The idea of  _ years _ felt more terrifying with every passing moment. 

Finally he shifted his position again and began to crawl in the direction of the wall, no longer caring if someone saw him. He would not walk toward whatever that empty space had been.

After several long moments of crawling, he paused, feeling his face furrow into a frown. This _ was _ the direction he had jumped from, right? Only, it shouldn’t have taken this long to get back to the wall. 

He went forward another few steps, feeling the floor carefully beneath his hands before transferring his weight. Then he reached a hand out to feel for the wall.

There was nothing but empty air.

Aziraphale began to panic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exploration! Searching for leads! Wasn’t that a fun chapter?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale had been here. Aziraphale had been here, and then he hadn’t, and he hadn’t even gotten to take his pastries with him.

At six forty-eight, Crowley latched the bookshop door behind him and got back into the Bentley. At seven oh-three, he pushed open the door to one of the little bakeries that Aziraphale liked, which Google had informed him opened at seven. 

The woman behind the counter was sliding trays of frankly delicious-looking pastries into a display case. She looked up when Crowley entered.

“Hi, how can I help you?” she asked. “We have everything available; no one’s been in yet.”

“Have you seen a Mr. Fell in here in the last two days?” Crowley asked, ignoring pleasantries both out of demonic habit and husbandly anxiety. “Short fellow — well, shorter than me, anyway, white-blond hair, blue eyes, looks like his clothes are from at least two centuries ago?”

Crowley knew perfectly well that Aziraphale’s clothes were, for the most part, not  _ quite _ two centuries old, but Aziraphale wasn’t there to argue it with him, so he didn’t care. 

“Why do you ask?” the woman said, a trifle warily.

_ “When?” _ Crowley asked, almost desperately. “When was he in here?”

“I never said he was.”

“Your  _ face _ did,” Crowley retorted, too tense to play games. “Just tell me, for the love of- I  _ need _ to know.”

The woman squinted at him. “I’ve seen you before,” she said slowly. “You’ve come in with him once or twice, haven’t you?”

_ “Yes,” _ Crowley said, not caring if it was true, and reasonably certain it was. “When was he here?”

“Day before yesterday,” the woman said finally. “Early afternoon, I’d say.”

“Did everything seem normal?”

“Yes, yes, I’d say so.” She frowned again. “Is he all right?”

“Hope so,” Crowley said, managing at the last second to quash the more truthful  _ no _ that had come to mind first. “Good chat, hope selling stuff goes well, got to go!”

He called this last through the door before it closed, and as an afterthought sent a small miracle to augment the “hope selling stuff goes well” bit. She  _ had _ been helpful.

Now to put that information into action. What would Aziraphale have done from here? It would technically be possible to walk to the bookshop. Maybe he had done that.

Turning, Crowley set off down the street, senses alert.

~

Crowley was just beginning to doubt the effectiveness of his plan when something decidedly non-human caught his attention. Following it, he turned off the main street and into an alley, wariness levels turned up close to maximum. 

The feeling grew stronger as he moved down the alley, until it abruptly lessened. Crowley frowned and backed up a few steps. The feeling strengthened again. It wasn’t Aziraphale. Crowley could recognize Aziraphale or his miracles blind drunk and exhausted, and he was currently neither. It didn’t feel particularly occult, either, which he wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or worried by. 

_ And maybe you’re just imagining things, _ he told himself.  _ Maybe Aziraphale was never here at all. _

His eyes fell on a crumpled paper bag, lying against the wall a few feet away. It was, Crowley realized, from the same bakery he had just been to. 

Aziraphale had been here. Aziraphale had been here, and then he hadn’t, and he hadn’t even gotten to take his pastries with him. The magic wasn’t Aziraphale’s, and it didn’t seem like Hell’s, and he was fairly certain it wasn’t human, and that left one option. One option that Crowley definitely didn’t like. 

He poked at the feeling gently, trying to see if he could trace it, or at least identify what it had done. Trying to find  _ something _ to go on to get Aziraphale back.

Something hooked itself onto him and  _ pulled, _ sharply, in a way that was definitely not of the human world. Crowley quickly withdrew his investigation and tried to back up a few steps, but his legs felt heavy and he stumbled. The pull got stronger. Instinctively he reached for his own power to try to block or break whatever had gotten hold of him, but nothing was forthcoming. 

_ Fuck, _ he thought clearly.  _ You absolute stupid, reckless idiot. When will you learn to slow down? _

Then the pull seemed to twist, and he stumbled against the wall, barely keeping from falling to the ground.

The alley disappeared around him.

~

Aziraphale was lying on the ground, curled up and trembling again. A part of him would have liked to at least be sitting up, but it felt like far too much effort. The utter silence of this place had been replaced by an all-too-familiar rushing noise, and he was panicking, and there was  _ nowhere to hide. _ He was lost in space, strange ground under him and nothing but empty air to all sides. 

He sucked in a breath, knowing it was too shallow but feeling incapable of fitting any more air into his lungs.

_ Well, this didn’t take long, _ he thought, almost hysterically.  _ It can’t even have been a week yet, and there’s no one here to tell you it’s all right. What are you going to do now? _

What  _ would _ he do, with no Crowley there to break the cycle. Break it himself?  _ Could _ he break it himself, here in this terrifying empty space with no corners to hide in, no walls to put to his back? 

He could. He  _ had _ to. Aziraphale was alone, and he would be for years, and he could not spend that time in this state. He would go mad, and he had told himself he wouldn’t. He would outlast them. He would wait, and he would get out, and he would find Crowley. He had left without saying goodbye, after all. He couldn’t leave forever without saying goodbye.

Very deliberately, he imagined Crowley, sunglasses abandoned on some table or another, slight worry line on his forehead, coming towards Aziraphale and pressing his hands down on Aziraphale’s shoulders. Murmuring something soft and reassuring that only they could hear.

The picture slipped, and he was alone and lost and it was so  _ dark _ and so  _ empty _ and he was  _ trapped, trapped and forgotten and- _

_ No. _ Think of the bookshop, a book in his hands, the smell of paper. Crowley, sitting down next to him and pulling Aziraphale into his arms. Crowley would want Aziraphale to get through this. If he were here he would say so, tell Aziraphale  _ you’ve got this, angel, _ and  _ just breathe, _ and  _ it’ll be all right. _ And he wasn’t there, thank Someone — Aziraphale couldn’t thank God, not right now, not with all that had happened in the last few days — and that was okay. That was  _ good. _ Aziraphale didn’t want Crowley here, he wanted him far away and safe.

He took a gasping breath, deeper than the ones he had been managing. Good. He could do this. He would be all right.

The walls,  _ there were no walls he was lost he was- _

Inhale. He was  _ fine, _ he would be  _ fine, _ he could do this. The rushing in his ears was fading, leaving only the dead, unnatural stillness. That was good, he reminded himself. His ears working was good, even if there was nothing to hear. 

Shakily, he pushed himself up to sit, pulling his knees up to his chest and looping his arms around them, clinging to the only tangible thing he could be sure of. He reached down and felt his ankles, tapped his shoes to feel the vibration on his feet. Still there. He was still there. He was all right.

He was also crying, he realized now, tears running down his face to soak into his collar. He wasn’t panicking any longer, not quite, but thinking of Crowley hurt, even as it calmed him. He could imagine Crowley’s hugs, remember what it was like to be loved and protected and safe, but it wasn’t real. Not now.

No, that wasn’t true. Crowley wouldn’t have stopped loving him already. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours. Or maybe days. It was hard to tell. However long it had been, Crowley couldn’t have moved on yet. Aziraphale was still loved. 

The thought didn’t stop the tears, but it did help settle his mind a bit more. He buried his face in his knees, shutting his eyes. If he held on tight enough, he could almost pretend that the darkness was only because his eyes were closed, the air around him only because he hadn’t chosen to sit against something. 

If he held on tight enough, he could almost pretend that everything was all right.

~

“What is  _ that?” _

“It’s the demon!”

“Were we expecting the demon?”

“How did it get here?”

Crowley landed hard, feet slipping from under him as he did. He hit the floor — a very bright, very white floor — with nowhere close to the amount of dignity he would have liked. The surface tingled under him, not quite hurting, but feeling like it might change its mind about that at any second. Heaven. He was in Heaven.

On the one hand, he wasn’t particularly surprised. Whatever had gotten him was almost certainly what had gotten Aziraphale, and he had already figured out that it seemed to be Heaven. Whoever was in the room he had shown up in seemed to be surprised to see him, but it also sounded like they knew who he was. Crowley was pretty sure that was a bad sign. 

What was also a bad sign was that, much as he’d like to get up and see what was going on, it seemed far beyond him, for some inexplicable reason. His mind was having thoughts and making suggestions, and his body seemed completely uninterested in even considering most of those suggestions. 

“You, get Uriel, or Michael, or somebody!” a voice called from nearby. 

He heard feet moving quickly, lots of them towards him, and finally managed to push his torso halfway off the ground and look around. Angels. Lots of angels, looking very displeased to see him. Which, he supposed, was to be expected. Demons didn’t tend to be very welcome in Heaven, especially unannounced. He would have liked to be there on his own terms, instead of half-stunned from whatever trap had been left in that alley. As it was, things were looking very bad for him.

“Don’t move,” one of the angels warned him. “And don’t try anything.”

“Do I look like I’m about to start dancing a jig?” Crowley shot back. He saw confusion on the faces around him and rolled his eyes. “You lot don’t even know what a jig is, do you? Tell me you know what  _ dancing _ is, at least?”

“Be silent,” another angel ordered. “And wait.”

“I’m not exactly good at being silent,” Crowley said, almost automatically. “Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you. Downright annoying, I can be.”

His muscles seemed to be coming back online, like they might listen if he told them to do something. He weighed the advantages of moving. It would be nice to not be on the floor when they decided what to do with him, but he was also vastly outnumbered, and this crowd didn’t seem like they’d take kindly to him doing much of anything. His chances of escaping were low; there were too many angels around, he didn’t know where he was or how to get back to Earth, and, most worrisome of all, when he reached for his usual well of power, it seemed to slip from his grasp, which ruled out miracles. 

He slowly pushed himself farther off the ground until he was balanced on one knee, the other foot pressed against the ground in such a way that it would be the work of a second to come completely to his feet, if he so chose. Assuming the strange paralysis didn’t come back. 

“What is this I hear about the demon?” That was a new voice, and it was coming from behind the gathered angels. It was also familiar. Crowley felt his shoulders tense, and he turned to see the speaker. Gabriel.  _ He _ certainly wouldn’t be happy to see Crowley, especially if they hadn’t expected him to show up. Though really, did they actually expect Crowley  _ not _ to come after Aziraphale? The idea was ridiculous.

“Hi,” Crowley said, grinning his best  _ I’m totally chill, what’s up with you _ grin. “Fancy seeing you here.”

As he spoke, he stood up, not as smoothly as he might have liked, but at least he didn’t feel about to fall down.

Gabriel glared at him. “How did it get here?” he asked, apparently to the other angels.

“Just showed up, sir,” one of them said. “Appeared the same way as, well, you know…”

Gabriel apparently did know, because he didn’t ask for clarification. “Get it under control,” he ordered. “Make sure it can’t try anything, and then we’ll see what-”

“Hey now,” Crowley interrupted, trying to sound calm and reasonable and fairly sure he was missing the mark a bit. “That doesn’t seem necessary-”

“Shut up,” Gabriel said, in the tone of someone who really would rather not be talking to Crowley at all, but was even less enthused at the idea of letting Crowley be the one doing the talking. 

Crowley was familiar with that tone, and he had learned long ago to ignore it. As he opened his mouth to reply, though, someone grabbed his arm. He hissed automatically and yanked it away, only for someone else to grab the other. Then his legs were knocked out from under him. 

Under normal circumstances, Crowley might have been able to keep his feet. Now, though, wobbly from being yanked through space with no warning, he went down hard, arm twisting painfully backward as he landed on the too-white floor. His sunglasses flew off, skittering far out of reach. It was looking like he wasn’t going to be able to talk himself out of this one, which was definitely bad, considering he didn’t really have any other options. 

_ Stupid, _ he berated himself again.  _ Should have been more careful, poking around leftover magic like that. _

Something heavy pressed into his back. A foot? Someone was  _ stepping _ on him, pinning him to the ground as someone else — several someone elses? He couldn’t turn his head far enough to see — pulled his arms together behind his back and fastened them together with what felt like handcuffs. He wondered, briefly, whether Heaven had gotten that idea from humans, and if so, who had first brought it Up. Then he was distracted by the fact that the handcuffs tingled rather like the floor, but stronger. Like they were one step closer to deciding to hurt. 

“Hey, lay off a little,” he tried, going for annoyed and landing considerably closer to pleading than he would have liked. That wouldn’t do at all.

Someone kicked his side, and he winced, opening his mouth to say something else, but closing it before anything could come out. He would  _ not _ risk sounding like they were hurting him. 

“Why are you here, demon?” That wasn’t Gabriel, which was interesting. Gabriel had seemed to be in charge of the questions. He wished he could roll over, or sit up, or at least turn his head farther, but there was still a remarkably strong foot planted in his back, and he was surrounded by angel feet. It was really quite unpleasant.

“Why do you think?” he half-spat. Then, quickly, he added,  _ “I _ wasn’t the one who left magical residue lying around where it grabbed the next thing it saw.” 

“So you’re  _ not _ here because of Aziraphale?” That  _ was _ Gabriel, somehow sounding more condescendingly disbelieving than Crowley had heard yet.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley tried to sound baffled. “Why would I-”

Another kick, hard enough Crowley had to bite his lip to keep from gasping out loud. “Don’t give me that. We know you spend time with him.”

They’d have to be blind not to, Crowley knew. Or not watching, which he and Aziraphale had both been hoping for, even if it didn’t seem likely. Still, playing dumb had been worth a try. Problem was, now he was out of ideas.

“Oh, I don’t have time for this,” Gabriel said after a moment, in which Crowley said nothing. “Throw it down there and we can deal with this later. Come up with an actual plan instead of this jerry-rigged stuff.”

_ Throw it down there _ sounded like it had something to do with Hell. Crowley did not like that, not one bit. He could dream that it meant sending him back to Earth, but given the handcuffs and the “we can deal with this later”, he somehow doubted it. 

Someone lifted his arms by the handcuffs. Crowley wished, very intensely, that said arms were not stuck  _ behind _ his back. 

“Tough one, are you?” that someone said, and pulled, dragging Crowley across the floor a few inches. He let out a sharp, pained breath before he could stop himself. It  _ hurt. _

“I can  _ walk,” _ he pointed out. 

“We can fix that,” one of the angels retorted. A moment later, he felt another cuff latch itself around one ankle, then the other. Damn it. He really should have thought that one through. 

Now he was being dragged by the legs and arms, half-tipped on his side so that he could once again see the angels crowding the room. Was this fun for them? Did they all have an innate liking of being cruel to demons? Was Aziraphale truly the only decent angel? 

The answer, in Crowley’s opinion, was yes, but he wasn’t really up to thinking about that right now. 

After a minute the movement stopped, and Crowley squirmed until he could turn his head to see why. At the sight, he frowned. A dark hole had opened up in the floor just beside him.  _ Down there _ suddenly sounded very ominous indeed.

“So what’s that?” he asked, trying to sound flippant. “Seems a little out of pl-  _ ow!” _ He broke off as one angel stepped on his leg and another kicked him, yet again. He was getting tired of the kicking.

“Why don’t you find out?” Gabriel asked, and okay, Crowley was really not into this experience. He opened his mouth to say as much, but all of a sudden he was being pushed rapidly toward the hole, and there was no time to say anything.

Before he knew it, Crowley was falling.

~

Aziraphale could see light outside his closed eyelids. Strange. He hadn’t been imagining light before. It was probably a bad sign, if his mind was starting to make up versions of the things he no longer had.

Maybe if he kept his eyes closed he could keep imagining it, imagining that there was something out there besides endless black.

Voices. He heard voices. He heard  _ Crowley’s _ voice. 

That wasn’t surprising, he supposed. Of all the things his subconscious would choose to imagine, Crowley’s voice was a likely one. He really ought to be worried, but he couldn’t manage it. Even if it wasn’t real, it was good to hear something.

Crowley’s voice broke off in a cry of pain. Oh no, that wasn’t all right at all; couldn’t Aziraphale at least have happy hallucinations? Would he be trapped here for years, imagining pain coming to the one he loved most dearly?

His eyes flew open automatically, unable to keep hiding in the face of that sound coming out of Crowley’s mouth, hallucination or no.

There was light in his prison. There were walls, just a few feet away, illuminated in a dim, glowing light.

He looked up.

The opening was there above him. The blinding white of Heaven shone down.

Something poked over the edge.

It fell.

It landed on the floor of the strange not-place where Aziraphale sat with a decided  _ oof. _

Red hair. 

Long body.

Familiar, beloved face.

_ No. _

Aziraphale lunged toward Crowley.

The horrible, impenetrable darkness slammed back down around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi yes don’t kill me please
> 
> Also this is the first chapter break that I knew for sure where I was going to put it. I wrote this ending and thought, “that’s a chapter break right there”. Let me know what you think!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale shifted to slide both his arms around Crowley’s waist, where he hung on. Tightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we get to one of my favorite chapters. I can’t say my _favorite,_ because I’m pretty sure I like some others at least equally, but this is certainly _a_ favorite of mine.

Aziraphale’s outstretched hands hit something warm and soft and bumpy and entirely unlike the unearthly surfaces of the cell. He grasped it instinctively, knowing what — knowing  _ who _ — it must be. There, an arm. Crowley’s arm. 

“Crowley!” he said urgently, before his words failed him, leaving him holding Crowley’s arm in the darkness and praying, silently, that the demon was awake.

“Aziraphale.” That voice, that wonderful, wonderful voice, that Aziraphale had been sure he wouldn’t hear again for so long, but it was  _ here, _ in this awful place, and that was terrible, it was awful, Crowley didn’t deserve this...

Aziraphale began to cry again, whether from joy or misery or fear he didn’t know. His fingers tightened on Crowley’s arm briefly, before he made himself loosen them again. He still didn’t know how injured Crowley might be, and hurting him would be-

“Angel.” Crowley’s voice was gentle, and soothing, even though he was still lying on the floor, likely with no idea where he was and having just gone through who knew what up in Heaven. Aziraphale took a shuddering breath and tried to calm himself. He ought to be helping Crowley, not sniveling uselessly.

_ “Aziraphale,” _ Crowley said again, a little sharper. “Hey, hey now, it’s-” he paused- “I’m here now.”

“That’s just it,” Aziraphale sniffled. “They’ve gotten you too, and that’s  _ awful, _ and-”

“At least I know where you are now,” Crowley said. He paused. “Why can’t I see?”

“You can’t see either?” If  _ Crowley _ couldn’t see it must be very dark indeed. Aziraphale hadn’t known it was possible to make a place that dark.

“No,” Crowley said shortly. He took an audible breath. “Okay. Fine. This is fine.” He sounded like he was talking to himself. “If only I could move properly…”

“What’s wrong?” Aziraphale asked, feeling another rush of fear. “What have they done?”

“I’m all right, I’m all right,” Crowley said, but his voice was still tight. “They just put some handcuffs on me. I shouldn’t really be surprised, dropping a demon in on unsuspecting angels like that.”

“Do they hurt?” Aziraphale pressed. “I can’t imagine they used human ones, and Heavenly handcuffs…”

“No.”

“Crowley.”

Crowley sighed, and Aziraphale could hear the tremor in it. His worry grew again. 

“They don’t  _ hurt, _ but they...tingle? Like it  _ could _ hurt. They feel like sparkling water. You know, fizzy.”

_ “Fizzy?” _ Aziraphale repeated, and now he was laughing, but also crying, and oh, this was very confusing indeed. 

“I’m  _ trying, _ angel! It’s not like you can know what holy stuff feels like to a demon!” Crowley sounded vaguely affronted, but also like he was playing up the reaction. 

“I know!” Aziraphale replied. “I do! I just- I don’t know what’s happening, and it’s so dark, and now you’re here too, and I can’t- I don’t-” He broke off, definitely crying more than laughing again. Oh dear. This seemed awfully close to hysteria. He really had to get himself under control.

“Oh. Aziraphale.” Crowley’s voice had gone soft and gentle again, which made Aziraphale give another sob. “Here- just-” He made a frustrated noise, and rolled out from under Aziraphale’s clutching hand. Oh, here Aziraphale was not even asking if he was hurting Crowley, and making Crowley take matters into his own hands...and at the same time the panic was rising in Aziraphale again, because what if they got  _ lost, _ what if Crowley moved away and they couldn’t find each other again?

There was a grunt from the direction Crowley had gone, and Aziraphale scrambled towards him again, terrified that all he would find would be empty air, no Crowley, no walls, no-

He hit something warm and solid and upright — Crowley must have sat up — with enough force to knock them both over. Aziraphale instantly untangled himself and sat back up, apologies tripping over themselves in their haste to get out of his mouth, and oh, why was he like this, why couldn’t he just calm down?

“Shh,” Crowley interrupted, but Aziraphale felt that he was still on the ground. “Hush, no, Aziraphale, I’m okay, just- help me up this time? My muscles aren’t too happy with the way they’ve been knocked around today.”

Aziraphale gingerly wrapped an arm around Crowley’s shoulders and pulled him back up to sit. Doing so brought them close, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure that he could let go again, not with Crowley right here, the familiar angles of him right there for Aziraphale to run his hands over, even if he couldn’t see them.

“C’mere,” Crowley said. “Seriously, angel, I’m all right. I’d hug you, I really would — I want to so bad — but I can’t exactly use my arms.”

“Oh!” Aziraphale said. “I should- I should get them off, or at least look to see what they’re like.”

“No, you should come  _ closer _ and let me help you,” Crowley said.

“I should be helping you, you’re the one who’s-”

_ “You’re _ the one who’s having a breakdown,” Crowley cut in, “and I don’t appreciate you pretending you’re not. I mean it. I’m not going to break if you lean on me a bit.”

Aziraphale hesitated. Then he leaned carefully against Crowley’s chest, slipping one arm behind the demon’s back. It felt so good to be close to another being, to be close to his  _ husband. _ The darkness still surrounded him, and he was still lost, but he was  _ less _ lost. 

There was a soft  _ whoosh _ of air and something soft brushed Aziraphale’s shoulders, then his hair. Wings. Crowley had put his wings around Aziraphale. Aziraphale couldn’t see them — he still couldn’t see anything, the darkness still pressed in on all sides — but he knew what they felt like. 

_ “Oh,” _ he said, voice catching.

“I’m here, Aziraphale,” Crowley said, and his voice was close, so close, filling the cocoon he was creating with his wings. “You’ll be okay. I’ve got you.”

Aziraphale gasped out another sob, no longer sure why he was crying, but unable to stop. He pressed his face into Crowley’s chest.

“Shh,” Crowley murmured, and Aziraphale felt Crowley’s nose press into his hair. “You’re okay.”

“It’s so very large,” Aziraphale sniffled after a minute. “And empty. I’m lost.”

“You’re not lost,” Crowley said, but Aziraphale thought he could hear a waver in the words. “You’re right here with me.”

Aziraphale didn’t say anything to that. The blackness pressed in on his eyes, oppressively blank, and he closed them again, trying to pretend that he had chosen not to see. Against him, Crowley was warm, and alive, and solid, and Aziraphale breathed in his scent, familiar and reassuring.

The blackness pressed in. And Crowley was there.

~

Crowley was tired. His body hurt, and his arms were tied behind his back, and his ankles were linked together, and it was very, very dark, so dark he couldn’t even  _ see, _ and everything had abruptly gone very, very wrong. 

And Aziraphale was there, curled up against Crowley’s chest, crying and terrified and  _ real. _ He was solid and alive, cloaked in Crowley’s wings, arm wrapped around Crowley’s waist. Despite the grimness of their situation, Crowley felt the knot of terror he’d been carrying ever since he woke up and found Aziraphale gone loosen. Whatever happened now, he had found Aziraphale. 

He buried his face more firmly in Aziraphale’s hair and breathed in, trying to soothe the panic that had lodged itself firmly in his chest the second he tipped over the edge of this strange pit of nothingness. Now that he was stationary, he could tell that this wasn’t Hell, or Earth, or even Heaven, quite. The not-Hell part was the important one. That meant Aziraphale was all right. Crowley had been terrified when he first landed and heard Aziraphale speak, all of his instincts screaming that something awful had happened, Aziraphale had Fallen, and Crowley couldn’t save him. But then it became clear that this  _ wasn’t _ Hell, and so that terrible event hadn’t come to pass.

Crowley was very carefully not thinking about the way the air had rushed around him on the way down, or the lack of control he’d had over it. That was just asking to have a whole demon-load of issues come to the surface, and this was  _ not the time. _

Someone, Aziraphale was in a state. Crowley wasn’t sure he had ever seen the angel seem so honestly, blatantly terrified. Sad, scared, subdued by Heaven, certainly, and plenty of times. But not this almost base-level fear. Though…

Crowley looked around their prison. Or, tried to look around. No matter how hard he strained his snake-ish eyes, nothing stood out. Just darkness. 

He moved his attention back to the still sniffling angel pressed up against him. Alone in here for  _ days, _ while Crowley scoured London for a lead? Alone, without even the barest hint of light and not even enough space between the walls to spread his wings — as Crowley had just discovered? Anyone might start to break. Crowley was pretty sure the only reason he still had as much of his head as he did was because of the reassuring, familiar weight of Aziraphale’s presence. 

Oh, but he wanted to truly hug Aziraphale. This whole not-having-your-arms thing was awful. If he could just hold his angel, everything might feel a little more in control. As it was, the handcuffs were a constant reminder of just how completely out of control he was, in the worst of ways. 

Although…

“Aziraphale?” he asked. “You know you can hug me properly, if you want.”

He felt guilty for the roundabout request — he’d been  _ trying _ to stop doing that — but he could feel the stress tipping him back into old habits already, and he didn’t have the strength to fight it. 

_ Just stay aware of it, _ he told himself.  _ Don’t let yourself slide all the way. _

Luckily, Aziraphale had known Crowley for thousands of years, and was excellent at deciphering his subtle requests. Though at the moment, it was possible that he just wanted to hug Crowley. Whatever the reason, Aziraphale shifted to slide both his arms around Crowley’s waist, where he hung on. Tightly. 

Crowley closed his eyes against the tears that were trying to escape his eyes. He couldn’t fall apart. Aziraphale needed him. 

A few tears slipped out anyway, dampening Aziraphale’s hair. Crowley pulled his wings tighter around the two of them and tried to focus on nothing but Aziraphale’s comforting presence.

~

After what felt like a long time, Aziraphale let go of Crowley’s waist and moved back so his head and shoulders were resting in the demon’s lap. He still felt lost, and scared, and as though his grip on reality was much looser than he’d like it to be, but the tears seemed to have stopped. And the shaking. He had been getting very tired of the shaking.

“Are you really all right?” he asked.

“Are you?” Crowley said immediately.

“No,” Aziraphale admitted. “I feel as though I’m losing something important, only I can’t quite grasp what it is. But I asked you first.”

Crowley sighed audibly. “I’m all right, given the circumstances. But I  _ am _ getting tired of these handcuffs, and the dark, and these last few days in general, and I’m worried about you.”

“About me?”

“Yes, you.” Crowley actually sounded annoyed. “Aziraphale, you do realize you just had what might be the worst breakdown I’ve ever seen you have? I’m  _ worried _ about you.”

“Oh.”

A wingtip brushed his cheek. “Yes,  _ oh. _ This place-” Crowley’s voice dropped lower- “This place is meant to break whoever’s in it, and if we don’t get out of here soon, it’s going to work.”

“We can’t get out,” Aziraphale said softly. “It’s endless, and there’s no light anywhere. I looked.”

“We  _ have _ to,” Crowley said, in the tone that Aziraphale knew meant he had no plan beyond those three words. 

“I wish we could,” Aziraphale whispered, and felt another tear run down his cheek. Goodness, he hadn’t cried this much in centuries. Maybe ever. 

Crowley sighed, a tight, scared sigh that held tides of emotions behind it. “Can you see if you can get these cuffs off? I’m sick of not being able to use my limbs.”

“Oh!” Aziraphale sat up, keeping a hand on Crowley’s leg as though he might get lost if Aziraphale let go. Maybe he would. There was no telling in this place. “Of course!”

He moved behind Crowley and ran his hands carefully over the metal holding Crowley’s wrists in place. 

“No lock,” he murmured after a minute. “These are Heavenly, right enough.”

“I could tell,” Crowley murmured back, not quite snappishly.

“Of course. Let me just...”

Aziraphale trailed off as he tried to nudge power into the cuffs, suggesting they unlock. 

Nothing happened.

He frowned and tried again. 

His power didn’t come.

“I don’t seem to be able to do miracles,” he said, proud in spite of himself at how his voice hardly wobbled at all. 

“Damn,” Crowley said. “And duh. I can’t do any, so why would you be able to? And why would they bother putting us in a prison where we can do miracles? Can’t be  _ nice _ to your prisoners, now, can you?”

“Are they hurting you very badly?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley took a long, slow breath. “No, luckily. Just still...fizzy. Very intensely fizzy.”

“Fizzy,” Aziraphale repeated again, and just barely managed to avoid giggling. 

“You can laugh, you know,” Crowley said. “I said that to make you laugh.”

“I don’t want to laugh at your discomfort.”

“It’s not at the discomfort. ‘S at the word choice.”

“Fizzy,” Aziraphale said a third time, and laughed a little.

Crowley laughed with him, leaning into Aziraphale’s chest — oh, he had put his wings away — so that Aziraphale’s chin hooked over Crowley’s shoulder. It was a familiar pose, one they did often at home. It made Aziraphale’s heart ache. He slipped his arms around Crowley from behind, linking his hands together over Crowley’s chest.

“You can squeeze a little more, you know,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale tightened his arms. Crowley sighed softly and tipped his head back to rest on Aziraphale’s shoulder. A moment later Aziraphale felt a light kiss land on the side of his chin.

“It’s awfully strange, not being able to see you,” he complained. 

“I’d never realized just how much I expect to be able to use my vision,” Crowley responded. “And my limbs, when I’m in this form. It’s strange not having either.” He shivered a tiny bit, and Aziraphale clung tighter again, not entirely sure whether it was more to reassure Crowley or himself. 

“Well, we can’t just stay here,” Crowley said after another minute. “If we sit here too long, neither of us will be in a state to find a way out.”

“I’m already in that state,” Aziraphale said softly. “I tried, I really did, but there’s no way out, Crowley, and it’s so  _ big, _ and there are no walls…”

“What do you mean, no walls?” Crowley asked. “This place is  _ tiny, _ Aziraphale. I couldn’t even stretch out my wings.”

Aziraphale gaped, then realized Crowley couldn’t see him and said, “There was one, when I got here, and I walked along it to see if there were any way out, only then I found a hole, and I jumped away, and now we’re in the middle somewhere. No walls.”

“But-” Crowley said, then stopped. “Let go for a minute, will you?”

Aziraphale did, reluctantly. He kept a hand on Crowley’s shoulder, unwilling to risk misplacing him somehow. Crowley shimmied forward a few centimeters, then stopped. “Here. Right here, where my feet are. There’s a wall.”

Aziraphale half-crawled out from behind Crowley and down to the demon’s feet. Then he reached out to lay a hand on the wall Crowley had found...and felt nothing but empty air.

“There’s nothing there,” he said, and oh dear, that was definitely a tremor of panic in his voice again. 

“There  _ is,” _ Crowley insisted, and moved forward again, bending his knees under Aziraphale’s hand. He folded his feet to the side and continued moving until his shoulder brushed Aziraphale’s. “My knees are pressing against it.”

Aziraphale waved in the air beyond Crowley’s knees, and again found nothing. He brought his hand back, brushing Crowley’s knees on the way. 

Crowley jumped. “How did you do that?”

“What?”

“I thought- there’s a wall there, I can  _ feel _ it, but your hand just touched the same spot.”

“How is that possible?” Aziraphale asked, and his voice was definitely wobbly again.

“I don’t know,” Crowley said, and he didn’t sound much better. “Is the wall real, or not? It  _ feels _ real.”

“But there’s nothing there!” Aziraphale said again. “Nothing. Just open space. More and more open space.”

~

Crowley took a deep breath. He was fine. Everything was fine. “I don’t like this.” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, sounding like he was only loosely managing to keep his tone within the realm of calm. “I think I may not be able to hold it together much longer.”

“Shit,” Crowley said. “Try, okay? Focus on me, not whatever walls are or aren’t there.  _ I’m _ here, right? And you’re here too.”

“Are you?” Aziraphale asked, his tone skewing farther toward hysterical. “How can I be sure? What if I’m imagining you?”

“You’re  _ not,” _ Crowley said urgently. “I’m right here. You can feel me.” He wanted desperately to be able to grab Aziraphale’s hand, squeeze him, hold him,  _ something, _ but his hands were trapped behind his back, and neither of them could fix that. He’d have to do without.

“I could feel the wall,” Aziraphale said shakily. “Before I lost it. What if you go away too?”

Crowley didn’t want to think about the wall. Crowley really, really didn’t want to think about the wall. Because if he did, he was going to start spiraling too, and if they did that there was no way out. 

“Don’t,” he said carefully, “talk about the walls. One of us needs to keep our head, and right now it’s me. And that’s okay!” he added hastily, as Aziraphale took in a breath Crowley knew was going to be used to apologize. “Just. Help me out here.”

“All right,” Aziraphale said in a small voice.

“Okay,” Crowley said, as though he had any plan beyond  _ don’t panic don’t let them win keep Aziraphale safe shit shit shit we’re never getting out of here, _ which didn’t really count. He took a breath and tried to think in the shorter term.

“Okay,” he said again. “We’re going to lie down, because there’s really no reason to keep putting in the effort of sitting up. And then-”  _ I’ll hold you, _ he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. “Just. Let’s lie down. C’mon.”

Aziraphale did, pressing himself close to Crowley as soon as they were both stretched out on the floor. 

“I feel so  _ foolish,” _ he whispered as they settled.

“Don’t,” Crowley said. “Just remember that I’m real, and you’re real, and I’m not going anywhere without you. That’s it for now. Okay?”

“Okay,” Aziraphale murmured, draping an arm over Crowley’s side and pulling them closer together. His fingers ran over the edge of the handcuffs, gentle and warm against skin that had spent who knows how long against cold, irritating metal. 

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut and bent his head forward until his face met Aziraphale’s hair. It was soft, and familiar, and if he focused only on that he could almost imagine that they weren’t in a Heavenly prison cell where space and possibly time didn’t seem to apply. 

After a moment he remembered the rest of his hastily constructed “make-Aziraphale-believe-I’m-real” plan, and brought his wings back out, pulling them as tightly around the two of them as he could, so that Aziraphale was surrounded by feathers. He couldn’t see them, but if Crowley brought them close enough, Aziraphale would hopefully feel them. Hopefully, they would help ground him enough that they could find an escape route.

Crowley carefully did not think about what they would do in the event that there was no escape route. Neither of them would come out of this whole if they spent as long as he was sure Heaven was planning to leave them there. Not to mention the fact that it looked likely that he would be taken out first, and sent on to some other, more demonic torment, which would leave Aziraphale here alone. Again.

Crowley knew that Aziraphale would break if he were here alone for much longer. Crowley was fairly certain that  _ he _ would break without Aziraphale to ground him, but that wasn’t a worry. He wouldn’t be left alone in this place. If they couldn’t get themselves out, Aziraphale would. 

Crowley shut his eyes tighter and tried to think of nothing but the fact that he was here, with Aziraphale right next to him, and at least for now, they had this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They’re together now. For better or for worse, though I have a guess as to what y’all’s opinion on which of those it is will be.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale breathed in, then out. There was a wall right in front of him, he told himself. Crowley was touching it. Aziraphale had felt it earlier.

Aziraphale didn’t know how long he lay there, covered in Crowley’s wings, arm around Crowley’s thin waist, letting his heart rate settle as best as he could. Crowley hardly moved, seemingly content to have Aziraphale cling to him like a child with a nightmare. And, Aziraphale supposed, he might very well be. This couldn’t be easy on Crowley either. 

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale murmured eventually.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Crowley said. He sounded like he meant it. 

Aziraphale didn’t reply at first. Then he said, “How did you end up here?”

“Looking for you,” Crowley said, then knocked his shoulder gently against Aziraphale’s forehead when the angel tensed.  _ “Not _ your fault. I was panicky and not careful enough. Whatever they did to grab you left something behind, and I accidentally got caught up in it.”

“If you had run instead-”

_ “Aziraphale.” _ Crowley sounded somewhere between shocked and anguished. “You know I wouldn’t-”

“But-”

“No,” Crowley said. “We’re not talking about this now. Later. After we’re out of here.”

_ You’re still on about that? _ Aziraphale wanted to ask, but didn’t. Crowley, he was realizing now that he wasn’t quite so worked up, was terrified. Terrified, and probably hurt, and heading rapidly toward hopeless. But he was keeping up this one thread of positivity, this  _ we can escape, _ because Aziraphale wasn’t, and if they both gave up, they were truly lost. 

Aziraphale could help with that. They were a team now. Our Side. And Our Side meant sharing responsibilities, which included keeping them both alive and sane as long as possible. If the way to do that right now was planning a way out of this dark, shapeless, awful place, then they would plan.

“How shall we do that?” he asked. “Get out, I mean. What first?”

Crowley was silent. 

“Me neither,” Aziraphale said finally.

Crowley laughed, a sad huff of air that ruffled Aziraphale’s hair. “We’re not going to find anything lying here, at least.”

“But I don’t want to move,” Aziraphale said, knowing he sounded pathetic and not quite able to avoid it.

Crowley curled closer, nuzzling Aziraphale’s forehead. “We  _ need _ to,” he said. 

Which meant that Crowley didn’t want to move either. Aziraphale sighed. “Kiss me first?”

“You say that as though it’s a question. Come up here, though, even my neck doesn’t bend that far.”

Aziraphale laughed, feeling more genuine happiness than he had since before he landed on the floor in Heaven, and scooched along the floor until he could feel Crowley’s breath on his face. They leaned in...and promptly bonked noses.

“It’s so  _ dark,” _ Aziraphale complained. 

“Can we not talk about that?” Crowley asked. “I’m trying to pretend I’m just sitting here with my eyes closed for fun.”

“Why would we try to kiss each other with our eyes closed?”   


“As a challenge?” Crowley suggested. A moment later his lips brushed Aziraphale’s. “See?”

“You are incorrigible,” Aziraphale said.

“That’s the angel I know. Let’s get going.”

Aziraphale sat up. “Going where, though? And how are you going to go anywhere? You can’t walk.” 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said with infinite fondness. “I’m a  _ snake.” _

“And that transfers to being tied up in human form?”

“Hope so,” Crowley said. “Don’t question it.”

And that last was probably as much for Crowley as for him, Aziraphale thought. Very well, then. He wouldn’t question it.

“What do we try first?” he asked instead.

“Let’s start at the wall,” Crowley said.

“Crowley-”

“You said you walked along a wall for a while when you were first here. And I felt one a little while ago. We’re going to start at the wall.”

Aziraphale thought about that. Heard Crowley’s tone, calm and oh-so-carefully controlled. All right. They would start at the wall.

“I think it’s this way,” he said, and started walking. He heard a rustle as Crowley moved...however he was moving. 

“You’re still there, right?” he asked after a few seconds. 

“Yes,” Crowley’s voice said from the darkness to his left. “Not going anywhere without you.”

They kept going.

“Here,” Crowley said finally. “Found it.”

Aziraphale breathed in, then out. There was a wall right in front of him, he told himself. Crowley was touching it. Aziraphale had felt it earlier.

He put a hand out...and brushed something solid.

“You feel it,” Crowley said, and it was as much a question as a statement.

“I do,” Aziraphale said. “Now what?”

“Now we look for weak spots.”

Weak spots. Of course.

They began to move along the wall.

~

The wall along Crowley’s left side vanished. 

No, not quite. It was still there from his torso to his feet, but his shoulders and head were back in empty space.

“There’s an opening here,” he said in response to Aziraphale’s questioning noise from behind him.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “We- we probably ought to look at it more closely this time.”

“This time?”

“I think I found it before,” Aziraphale said. Crowley felt the angel come up beside his head and sit down. “A...hole, almost. It frightened me, and I jumped away, and then-”

“Let’s not go there right now,” Crowley interrupted hastily.

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed. 

Crowley moved sideways a little, so he could stick his head through the opening. It felt the same as the rest of this place, only…

“There’s no floor over here,” he said.

“That does sound like it’s the same place,” Aziraphale said. His voice was closer to the ground now, like he had lain down next to Crowley. “Oh. Yes, there’s no floor. And I can’t feel anything when I reach down.”

“I  _ wish _ we could  _ see,” _ Crowley said intensely.

“We aren’t talking about that, remember?” Aziraphale replied. “I think we shall have to go down.”

_ “What?” _ Crowley said. “No, Aziraphale, we can’t-”

“There are no other options,” Aziraphale said.

“I’m not jumping down an unknown hole. I can’t. Aziraphale, we don’t know what’s down there, it could be worse, or-”  _ or it could be Hell, _ he couldn’t bring himself to say. If Aziraphale jumped into a pit and ended up in Hell...if Aziraphale  _ Fell… _

“There’s nothing else to try,” Aziraphale said again, and Crowley heard the fear in his voice, and how hard he was trying to quash it. “We aren’t finding any way out up here, and you know we can’t stay forever. We have to at least try.”

“Since when are you the hopeful one?” Crowley asked, but the words came out more scared than scathing.

“Since you aren’t,” Aziraphale said, but he didn’t sound annoyed. Just as though he were stating a fact.

“You really think we have to take our chances with whatever this is?”

“Unless you have a better idea. We can’t wander around forever. I’m- I can’t hold on that long.”

“I hate this,” Crowley said. He rolled over and sat up. “Fine. I’ll go first.”

“You can’t even move properly, Crowley-”

“I  _ can not _ sit here in the dark while you jump into an unknown hole, Aziraphale.”

_ “I _ can not be in here  _ alone _ again, Crowley!”

The edge of panic in Aziraphale’s voice made Crowley pause. He couldn’t let Aziraphale go first, he  _ couldn’t, _ but he wouldn’t leave Aziraphale alone, either. A large part of him wanted to curl up on the floor and possibly never get up again, just so he wouldn’t have to make this decision. But then Aziraphale — and he — would be trapped here forever, and that wasn’t all right either.

“We could go together,” Aziraphale said in a small voice.

Crowley opened his mouth incredulously, then closed it again. 

“Since you won’t let me go first, and I won’t let you go first,” Aziraphale pressed. 

“I  _ hate _ this,” Crowley said. 

Aziraphale leaned against his side. “I know. Let’s go.”

Crowley turned to bury his face in Aziraphale’s shoulder. He felt Aziraphale put an arm around him, pulling them closer. For a minute, they just sat there, not speaking, not moving, legs dangling into blank, black nothingness. 

Then Crowley lifted his head. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Together they slid forward, until they were truly on the edge of the invisible ledge they were sitting on.

“Go,” Aziraphale whispered.

They went.

~

For a second, Crowley was falling,  _ falling, again- _ and then, almost before he could do more than take in a terrified gasp, he hit the ground. Beside him Aziraphale made an  _ oof _ noise as they came to rest. 

The ground felt no different from what they had spent the last few hours on. There was no more light, no more sound. Nothing seemed different. If not for the slight ache in his elbow and hipbone where they had slammed into the ground, Crowley might not have thought they had gone anywhere at all.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, but he sounded shaky again. “Are you?”

“Given the circumstances.”

Aziraphale thankfully didn’t call him on the deflection, just shuffled over until they were right next to each other again. “At least it wasn’t too far down.”

“Yeah.” Crowley leaned into Aziraphale. He was feeling his grasp on reality slip farther with every passing minute, and it was decidedly unpleasant. It was truly impressive how Aziraphale had managed multiple days alone here. 

Aziraphale’s hand found the cuffs on Crowley’s wrists again, smoothing a gentle finger along the edge. “The first thing I’m going to do i- when we get out of here is take these things off.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard,” Crowley murmured.

“I can’t imagine it will be all that hard, when I can do miracles again.”

“Exhaustion is a thing,” Crowley pointed out. “If you-”

“I am not arguing about this,” Aziraphale said. “Especially right now. We have to be careful not to lose our momentum.”

“I felt a lot of momentum just now,” Crowley said wryly.

Aziraphale snorted an almost-laugh, and Crowley felt a little better. 

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s find the wall.”

~

“Aziraphale?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale turned toward the voice. “What is it?”

“There’s something different over here.”

Aziraphale made his way to Crowley. 

“Down here,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale dropped down beside the demon. “See?”

Aziraphale did see, which was strange in and of itself. A patch of ground where the wall met the floor had a faint haze of light, almost imperceptible even with eyes long used to total darkness. 

“It feels strange, too,” Crowley said. “Rough, not like everything else here.”

Aziraphale reached out and ran a hand over the spot. It felt bumpy and solid instead of smooth and half-real like the ground he was sitting on. 

“It can’t be this easy,” he said. “I can’t imagine that they would actually leave a weak spot.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said. “We have no other options. This is either going to save us, or it won’t and nothing will have changed.”

“We can’t use miracles, though,” Aziraphale pointed out. “What can we even do?”

“Push?” Crowley suggested. “Wish really hard? No idea. Just try.”

Aziraphale reached out again and laid his hand against the faint,  _ faint _ glow. Crowley’s feet bumped up against it, covering the rest of the glow and half-overlapping Aziraphale’s fingers. Then Aziraphale pushed, and felt Crowley do the same.

Nothing happened. It wasn’t surprising, but he was disappointed all the same.

“I don’t know how I can be wishing any harder,” he said.

“Try anyway,” Crowley suggested.

They tried. 

Aziraphale tried to send a miracle into the light spot, doing his best to ignore how the miracle wouldn’t even seem to coalesce.

Crowley said, “Get out of the way, angel,” before bringing his feet back and kicking the ground, as if it might crumble under the force of demonic frustration. 

“I don’t think it’s going to change,” Aziraphale said finally.

“I am not,” Crowley said, “letting you spend the rest of your life here.”

“What about you?” Aziraphale asked, slightly stung.

Crowley was quiet for a minute before he replied, “I don’t think they’ll let me stay down here forever.”

“What do you mean?” Aziraphale asked, a new knot of worry joining the others that had taken up residence in his chest.

“What I remember hearing when they were discussing what to do with me is ‘we can deal with this later’, which won’t be as long as they’re planning on leaving you here.” Crowley said reluctantly.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Crowley. I can’t- you can’t-”

“I know,” Crowley said. “So we  _ have to get out of here.” _

Aziraphale reached out and squeezed Crowley’s shoulder. 

They tried again.

And again, nothing happened.

~

On some invisible, forgettable, hardly-known plane of existence, something thumped faintly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well...they found _something._ What do you think?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anathema didn’t like mysteries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brings some exciting changes...like a new perspective! I like this one a lot, and I hope you do too.

Anathema Device was in her garden, sitting on a rock and reading a book. She was in the garden because Newt had asked if she wanted to come get groceries, and when she said she had to finish what she was reading first, he had told her “fine, but you have to go sit outside, I don’t think you’ve even left the house in three days.” Despite the fact that she was fairly certain the same was true for him, Anathema had decided the path of least resistance would be to go and sit outside.

Unfortunately, this meant that when Adam Young came running up the lane and into the garden, she had no way of politely putting him off until later. She liked Adam, but it was not currently a good time.

“Anathema!”

Anathema suppressed a sigh. “Adam, it’s really not a good-”

“Something’s weird,” Adam interrupted. 

“What do you mean?” Anathema asked, folding her book closed and leaving her finger to mark her spot. Adam looked worried, and he wasn’t accompanied by his friends, which was odd. 

“Something’s  _ weird,” _ Adam repeated. “It feels like there’s something stuck where it’s not supposed to be. I don’t like it.”

Anathema frowned. Adam was ostensibly a normal child now, but it wasn’t hard to tell that there was still something else going on in that head of his. If he said something was weird, then something was weird, and she was going to need to find out more.

“Does it seem dangerous?” she asked.

“No?” Adam frowned, as though concentrating on something. “Just...wrong.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you sure it  _ needs _ to be fixed? It’s not just a normal change?”

Adam thought for a minute. “It’s  _ wrong,” _ he said again. “It shouldn’t be like this.”

“Okay,” Anathema said. “What do you need to be able to fix it?”

“Don’t know,” Adam said. “Should I try?”

Anathema took a deep breath. Adam was perpetually earnest, and she liked him quite a lot, and he could also be very, very annoying. 

“Yes,” she said, and slid off the rock to sit on the ground, in case something dramatic happened. 

Adam frowned, his eyes going slightly unfocused as he stared at some point in the air above the garden. Anathema felt energy coalesce, and shift, and...unlatch? 

“Come on,” Adam said. “See?”

Anathema was fairly certain he wasn’t talking to her, so she stayed where she was. 

A moment later, there was a yelp of surprise, and Aziraphale the angel and Crowley the demon landed in the grass. 

Anathema gasped, and looked at Adam. The energy vanished, and the boy blinked a few times, face settling back into its normal expression. 

_ “Ow,” _ Aziraphale said. His eyes were screwed tightly shut. “Crowley-”

“Angel,” Crowley said in much the same tone. 

Aziraphale reached out seemingly on instinct, grasping Crowley’s arm. “What-”

“You’re all right now,” Adam interrupted. “I fixed it. Don’t worry.”

Both beings froze. Crowley opened one of his eyes a tiny crack, then instantly closed it again. Aziraphale squinted at them. “Adam?”

“Yes,” Anathema said firmly. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t good. “And Anathema. What can we do?”

~

Bright. It was so, so bright, and it  _ hurt, _ and he couldn’t  _ see- _

Crowley felt Aziraphale’s hands on his legs, skating down until they reached the blessed cuffs. He was murmuring something, something about  _ I’m getting these off of you now, Crowley, I swear, not a minute more- _ but Crowley could barely register the words. He was fairly sure that someone else had spoken too, but he hadn’t heard a word they said. Why wouldn’t his mind clear?

The ankle cuffs loosened abruptly, and the edge of one scraped his foot as they were pulled away. Then Aziraphale’s presence moved up and the handcuffs dropped away. Crowley instantly brought his hands up — and  _ ow, _ his arms were cramping, he didn’t even know they could do that — and grabbed Aziraphale, clinging to the angel like there was nothing else there. He wasn’t entirely sure that there  _ was _ anything else. Aziraphale held him back, still murmuring, but now it was things like,  _ it’s all right, you can open your eyes, it’s just Anathema and Adam, I think they saved us, please come back to me- _

Crowley clung tighter and tried to believe him.

~

Aziraphale had to open his eyes. He had to open his eyes, and he had to talk to Anathema, who was probably real, but Crowley still hadn’t spoken since they got here, and Aziraphale couldn’t do this alone, he  _ couldn’t. _

“Talk to Anathema,” Crowley mumbled into his shoulder. “Get us home. Please.”

Crowley  _ never _ said please. Not even to Aziraphale. 

Aziraphale opened his eyes halfway, trying not to make an undignified noise at how very bright the world outside was. Bright, and detailed, and so _much._   


“Hello,” he said, trying not to sound as though he were on the verge of yet another panic attack. 

Anathema was kneeling in the grass a few feet away, looking worried. Adam was standing behind her, looking focused. 

“Hi,” Anathema said. “Are you- what can we do?”

She had asked that already, Aziraphale realized. Somewhere in the initial haze of falling out of that dark, dark — no, he couldn’t think about that right now, he had to get them home. 

“Could you take us home?” he asked. “To the bookshop. Where are we?”

“In my garden,” Anathema said. 

“Ah.” Aziraphale tried to think. “I see.” Apparently thinking wasn’t going to work just now.

“Is he all right?” Anathema asked, gesturing to Crowley. “Are  _ you _ all right?”

“Fine,” Aziraphale said automatically.

Anathema sighed. “I get it, I get it. Yes, I’ll take you home. Unless you want to come inside and have some tea or something.”

“Home,” Crowley said from beside him. “He asked to go home.”

“Okay,” Anathema said. “My car is just around the side.” She inspected them for a minute. “I think I’ll go bring it around to the gate and meet you there.”

As she walked off, she beckoned to Adam, who, thankfully, followed.

_ I like Anathema, _ Aziraphale thought.  _ She’s so unflappable. _ On an abstract level he felt bad for not giving her more of an explanation, but he was currently spending most of his energy on keeping it together until they got home.

“Can you walk?” he asked softly.

“Probably,” Crowley murmured. 

“I think we’re scaring Anathema.”

“Not surprised. Give me a minute and I can work on compartmentalizing some more. Didn’t have a chance at first.”

“Take your time,” Aziraphale said. 

“‘S as much for me as her,” Crowley pointed out. “I’m really not up for having a meltdown in public.” He sighed. “Sunglasses. I need my sunglasses.”

“I can-”

“You already got rid of the handcuffs, angel,” Crowley said. “And if the way I’m feeling is any indication, you’re not up to more miracles right now.” He snapped and a pair of sunglasses appeared in his hand. “Hoo. Yeah. Not full up on reserves right now.”

“Be careful,” Aziraphale scolded.

“Could say the same for you.”

Aziraphale decided not to waste more energy on this conversation. “Crowley?” he asked instead. “Is this real?”

Crowley blew out a long breath. “Think so. We can do miracles again, that’s a good indication.”

That wasn’t as sure an answer as Aziraphale would have liked, but it was a decent argument. “Let’s go home, then.”

~

Anathema didn’t like mysteries. And she didn’t like her friends appearing out of thin air acting injured and terrified and then refusing to talk about it. If the friends in question had not been an ancient demon and angel, she would have spent more time convincing them to tell her what had happened, or at least accept help. Given the circumstances, though, she got the impression she was lucky to be asked to drive them home. 

They had clearly pulled themselves together while she had been out pulling the car around. They had been almost-subtly leaning on each other as they walked out, but then climbed into opposite sides of the backseat as though nothing was wrong. When she glanced in the rear view mirror as they pulled out into the road, they had been holding hands.

The second time she looked at the mirror, Crowley had migrated halfway across the backseat, and Aziraphale was pressing himself into the corner between the seat and the door as though his life depended on it, while clutching Crowley’s hand with equal fervor.

The third time, Crowley had made it all the way across the seat and was pressed up right against Aziraphale, whose arm was now around Crowley’s shoulders. 

The fourth time, they had somehow managed to squeeze farther into the corner of the seat, and Aziraphale’s eyes were closed in a way that looked a lot more like he was shutting something out than dozing off. Crowley’s eyes were hidden by his sunglasses, but his face was equally tense.

Anathema stopped looking in the mirror after that.

When she pulled up in front of the bookshop, she told them as gently as she could. 

“Thank you, my dear,” Aziraphale said, which was familiar enough to reassure her a bit.

“Yeah,” Crowley agreed, which was also normal.

“Keep in touch, okay?” she couldn’t help saying.

Aziraphale nodded, but they were already bundling themselves out of the car and walking, haltingly, up to the front door. Anathema watched until they were inside, then sighed and started the drive home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anathema! Adam! Freedom for our protagonists! What do you think of this chapter?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re free. It’s time to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is yet another favorite chapter of mine. I know I keep saying this. I may, possibly, just plain like this story. (Spoiler: I do.)

They took three steps into the bookshop together before Crowley stopped and practically dove to grab Aziraphale in a hug. 

“I will  _ not _ let go,” he said, as though Aziraphale had even considered asking for anything of the sort. “I never want to be without my arms again.”

Aziraphale hugged back, feeling himself begin to tremble. “It’s real,” he murmured. “It’s so bright, and colorful. I can  _ feel _ it. We’re really here.”

Then his legs gave out, and apparently Crowley’s did too, because suddenly they were sitting on the floor, Aziraphale halfway in Crowley’s lap, Crowley’s face buried in Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“I think you’re right,” Crowley said, sounding so unsure that Aziraphale somehow found the ability to squeeze him tighter. “I can’t believe it, but I think you’re right.”

“But you kept telling me we’d find a way out,” Aziraphale said, confused. “Why can’t you believe we’re here?”

Crowley was silent for a long time, and Aziraphale realized that the demon was crying. 

“Crowley?”

“I didn’t-” Crowley said finally. “At first, I hoped we could get out, even though I didn’t see how. But then...it was so  _ dark, _ and nothing was where it was supposed to be, and I thought,  _ we’re never getting out of here. _ And then I realized that I would get out, but you wouldn’t, and I was so  _ scared, _ Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale felt tears starting in his own eyes. “You didn’t think we would get to come back here.”

“I’m sorry,” Crowley said. “I shouldn’t have given up so easily. I should have kept believing we’d be okay.”

“But you didn’t give up,” Aziraphale said. “I did. I already had, before you even got there. You’re the one who made me think maybe we could escape.”

“Oh,” Crowley said, and sniffled. “But I felt so  _ useless. _ I couldn’t even move properly.”

“I would still be in there if not for you,” Aziraphale said, feeling cold at the thought of just how true his words were. “You had every reason to give up, and you didn’t. You got us both out.”

Crowley didn’t speak again, but his shoulders started to shake in earnest. Aziraphale tried to stay calm, a stalwart support, but the reality of what a near miss he’d had with a rather terrifying fate was starting to sink in, and it was harder and harder to keep from following Crowley into tears.

Finally he gave up, in no small part because he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer anyway. He could hold onto Crowley just as well whether he was crying or not. And maybe it would let out some of the awful fear that was still coiled up inside him. 

~

At last, Crowley opened his eyes. The world outside was dimmed and grayish, but in a way that reminded him he had his sunglasses on. Light filtered through them, showing the familiar shapes of books and pillars and shelves. His arms were twisted around Aziraphale, who was likewise clinging to Crowley. 

They were in the bookshop. They were home. They had  _ escaped. _

“Didn’t get very far, did we?” he asked wryly.

Aziraphale laughed, but it sounded like he had been crying. “No, no, we didn’t.”

“I wonder how long we were gone.”

Aziraphale’s breath caught. “I’m nearly afraid to find out.”

“It wasn’t even two days until I got there,” Crowley pointed out. “And probably not much more than that again until Adam yanked us out for good.”

“Goodness,” Aziraphale breathed. “Years, Crowley. They said I would be there for years, and I’m this miserable after a few days? I see why they-”

“Nuh uh,” Crowley interrupted, recognizing the beginning of a familiar and decidedly unwelcome argument. “What have we been saying about that line of thinking? That place was torture, Aziraphale. No one should be expected to withstand it.”

Aziraphale didn’t reply, and Crowley’s heart clenched. If this set them back, if Aziraphale started believing Heaven was only trying to help him again...Crowley would go back up to Heaven and punch Gabriel right in his grinning face.

Well. Maybe not. Memories of  _ toss it down there, we’ll deal with this later _ were a little too fresh for Crowley to be able to see Gabriel and keep calm for a while. But he’d  _ want _ to. Oh, how he would want to.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he suggested. “Try to get some sleep or something.”

“All right,” Aziraphale agreed.

Neither of them moved. 

Finally Crowley sighed and withdrew his arms just enough to let Aziraphale climb to his feet. Then Aziraphale pulled Crowley up, which was rather more necessary than Crowley would have liked. His legs were still having trouble realizing they existed. Actually, now that he paid attention, a number of bruises and sore spots were making themselves known. He probably shouldn’t be surprised, given the various hits and falls he’d taken recently.

They took the stairs slowly, holding hands. Crowley was grateful for the dimness of the bookshop. However long they had spent in the dark, it was more than enough to make the light of the normal world overwhelming. 

In their bedroom at last, Crowley stopped and glared at the bed. 

“I’m too tired to miracle into pajamas,” he complained. “But I’m too tired to do it the human way either.”

Aziraphale leaned against the edge of the bed. “Mm,” he agreed.

Crowley kicked off his shoes and flopped facedown on the bed. It was soft, so soft, and light, and smelled like home. Behind him he heard rustling, and a few muffled thumps. 

“You okay?” he asked. He didn’t think he could get back up, but if Aziraphale was in danger, that might change.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. The bed tipped as he sat down. “Here. I brought you something more comfortable to wear.”

“Can’t  _ move,” _ Crowley complained, but he pushed himself up to look around. Aziraphale was wearing one of his nightshirts, clothes abandoned on the floor. Crowley blinked at them, wondering if he had ever seen Aziraphale leave clothes on the floor before. 

“Just do this,” Aziraphale said. “Then you can sleep.”   
  
It wasn’t fair to make Aziraphale baby him, not after what they’d both been through. Crowley had to do his part. He pulled off his jacket and tossed it on the floor. Then he unbuttoned his pants and pushed them haphazardly off, wincing as his bruises ached. Shirt, okay, yep, he could do this. Why did he wear so many clothes? He might have to change that. 

Soft black flannel landed in his lap. Oh. Pajamas. Aziraphale had brought him pajamas. Right. Pull the shirt over his head, shove legs through leg holes. There. That was better.

He flopped backward on the bed again, staring up at the ceiling.

“Do you want your glasses on?” Aziraphale asked.

_ Did _ he want his glasses on? Crowley pondered that. He hated forcibly going without, and between that and the overwhelming brightness of the regular world, he was loath to take them off. On the other hand, he was home, and sleeping in sunglasses was uncomfortable.

He sat up again, pulling off his glasses and handing them to Aziraphale. “Put them on the table?”

“Of course.” Aziraphale set the glasses on the bedside table and flicked on the light.

“You should try to sleep too,” Crowley said.

“I will,” Aziraphale said. He glanced at the lamp, then back to Crowley.

“Oh,” Crowley said, suddenly understanding. “Good idea.”

Aziraphale smiled tiredly. “I thought...the sun will be down soon.”

And while Crowley normally preferred to sleep with the light out unless Aziraphale was reading, tonight he was very in favor of making sure the room didn’t get  _ completely _ dark.

“Okay.  _ Now _ I’m lying down again until I feel...better.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley looped his arms around Aziraphale and tipped them both over — gently — onto the sheets. Aziraphale must have pulled back the covers at some point, he realized. He grabbed the edge of the quilt and pulled it over them. 

Aziraphale nuzzled into Crowley’s neck and linked their legs together. “You’re here,” he whispered.

“So are you,” Crowley murmured back.

“We’re home.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, letting his eyes close at last. “I think we are.”

~

“You’re not sleeping,” Aziraphale said, some time later.

“Neither are you,” Crowley pointed out. 

Aziraphale ran his hand down Crowley’s back. “You do it more than I do.”

“Yeah.”

“Is everything all right?”

Crowley sighed. He didn’t really want to talk about this. But he knew what Aziraphale wasn’t saying was along the lines of  _ you need to sleep, Crowley, _ and he was right. So he deserved to know what was wrong.

And...Crowley kind of did want to tell him. 

“It’s just…” he said. “I know I’m going to have nightmares, when I do fall asleep. And I hate that, and I don’t want you to have to deal with it.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “And you know what they’ll be about.”

“Yeah.”

“Shall I guess?”

Crowley pushed his face into Aziraphale’s chest. “Yeah.”

“I would guess,” Aziraphale said carefully, “that it has something to do with the fact that you fell off of things, mostly out of your control, multiple times in the last day or two.”

Crowley let out a shaky breath. “Yeah.”

“Is there something else?”

“...will you be annoyed if I just say ‘yeah’ again?”

“No,” Aziraphale said. “But I admit I don’t know what else you might be likely to have nightmares about tonight, unless it’s just our recent experience in general.”

Crowley sighed. “I woke up a few days ago,” he said slowly, “and you weren’t in the shop. And I looked for you, and you were  _ gone. _ I couldn’t find you and...I couldn’t feel you.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, very quietly, and Crowley could tell that he had figured it out.

“I  _ looked _ for you,” he said, voice rising. “All over the city, trying to find some kind of lead for where you had gone, and there was nothing for so long.”

“At least the world wasn’t ending,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley laughed in spite of himself. 

“That was the only good thing that whole day. And then I found a lead, but I stupidly moved too fast and got yanked up to Heaven myself so I couldn’t even rescue you.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t stupid,” Aziraphale said. “And you  _ did _ rescue me.”

“Didn’t,” Crowley argued. “Just got myself stuck right with you.”

“Crowley.” Aziraphale untangled himself from the cuddle and half-sat up. 

Crowley whined and reached for Aziraphale’s hand.

Aziraphale linked their fingers together.  _ “Crowley. _ Look at me.”

Crowley looked.

“I could not have done that without you,” Aziraphale said firmly. “I don’t know what else you think you could have done, either. You couldn’t have taken on Heaven single-handed. And if you couldn’t sense me, there was no way to figure out where I was and break me out.” He took a deep breath. “I thought I was going to die there, or as good as. I hoped you would realize there was danger and go to safety-”

Oh no, not this again. Crowley drew a breath to argue.

Aziraphale squeezed his fingers. “But another part of me hoped you would come and save me. And you did. I couldn’t do it by myself, but I could do it with you.”

“I couldn’t have done it by myself either,” Crowley said. “I don’t know what I would have done in there alone. How did you manage?”

“I didn’t,” Aziraphale said, as though it were obvious. “Didn’t you see me? Only a day or two, and I was already panicking.” His voice had a familiar quality to it, one that Crowley recognized as Aziraphale berating himself for not being better.

“Nope,” Crowley said. This, at least, was familiar ground. “We are not doing this. Didn’t you hear me say I don’t know what I would have done alone? That place was  _ awful.” _ A thought occurred to him. “Could you hear anything before I got there? After, I know we kept talking to each other, but…”

“No,” Aziraphale said quietly. He collapsed back onto the bed. “Oh, it was so  _ silent. _ I could hardly feel anything, either. It seemed like everything but me had just...stopped existing.”

“See?” Crowley said. “I didn’t have that. The dark, sure, but I could feel you touching me, and hear you talking to me, so all I had to deal with was the dark. And you could function that way too. And now we’re here.”

“I suppose.”

Crowley stroked his thumb over Aziraphale’s hand. “You are a smart, brave, strong angel, and there is no one else I would rather spend my life with.”

He had said those words before, multiple times. Each time, he thought Aziraphale started to believe them a little more.

Aziraphale didn’t reply immediately. Finally he said, “Go to sleep, Crowley. I’ll wake you up if you have nightmares.”

“I don’t want to wake  _ you _ up, if you fall asleep,” Crowley argued.

“We can both go back to sleep if you do,” Aziraphale said. “I mean it.”

Crowley bit his lip. He was so very tired. And Aziraphale would know if he stayed awake this time.

“Okay,” he said finally. Then, very quietly, “You’ll wake me up? If-”

“Always,” Aziraphale said. “You’re safe.”

“So are you.”

Aziraphale pulled him closer, then, tangling their legs together. Crowley went willingly, tucking his head against Aziraphale’s shoulder and slipping an arm around Aziraphale’s waist. Aziraphale dipped his head down and kissed Crowley’s forehead. Crowley tipped his face up and set another gentle kiss on Aziraphale’s lips. Aziraphale hummed a little and returned it, before pulling back and pecking Crowley’s nose.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Crowley murmured. “I love you too.”

Aziraphale pressed his nose into Crowley’s hair. “Sleep now.”

Crowley curled closer to his angel, and slept.

~

Crowley did have nightmares that night. Aziraphale woke him three different times to cuddle and calm down. Each time, Crowley apologized. Each time, Aziraphale told him not to worry about it.

The third time, there was light outside the window, and Crowley said he didn’t want to try to sleep any more. Aziraphale, who had just slept more than he had in a single night for years, was content to do the same. 

“Problem with that,” Crowley said, “is that it means we’ll have to get out of bed at some point.”

“Not yet, though,” Aziraphale replied. 

So they stayed in bed, and they dozed, and they enjoyed the many textures of sheets and pajamas and pillows, the softness of the light coming in the window, the faint burble of Soho daytime outside. They held each other, no longer clinging in fear — of losing each other, of darkness, of their own minds — but  _ holding, _ gently, lovingly, tenderly. Aziraphale felt his hands, his face, his feet, and found them all right where they were supposed to be. He looked at Crowley’s familiar face, all pointed nose and sleepy eyes, and reveled in being able to  _ see _ it once more.

And when they finally got out of bed, sometime after noon, they took the mellow mood out with them. Aziraphale made a whole pot of cocoa, from scratch, with milk and sugar and cocoa powder, and they drank it sitting side by side at the kitchen table. Crowley chose a record from the generous stacks by the gramophone, and played it in the background as they sat on the sofa, leaning against each other, Aziraphale reading while Crowley played on his phone. 

It wasn’t normal, not quite. One night’s sleep didn’t erase the events of the last four days — and it was four days; Crowley had eventually gotten up the courage to check. Neither angel nor demon was happy being out of reach of the other for any extended period of time — (“I can see you,” Aziraphale said the first time he felt his breath quicken at reaching out and not finding Crowley beside him, “but I still keep worrying that you’re not really here”) — and Crowley wore his sunglasses all afternoon, which he never did anymore when it was only the two of them. Aziraphale didn’t mention it. He understood.

It wasn’t normal, and it might not be normal for a long time, but they were there. They were alive, and back on their home turf, with each other for backup. There would be conversations to have and precautions to take. They would have to analyze what had gone wrong and discuss each of their new — or old but newly awoken — fears. They would plan and heal and move on.

But for today, they spoke of simple topics, or not at all. They sat close, and acknowledged what needed to be shared. They held onto each other, and they set themselves firmly back into their usual space. 

It was a day for peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, we’ve come to one of my favorite reasons to hurt characters: comforting them afterwards. :) As always, comments are my joy and I'd love to know what you think!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They’re home, and getting some of the hugs and peace they need, but there are a few loose ends that I wasn’t happy leaving lying around. This is how I went about tying up the first of them.

Aziraphale closed his book and glanced at Crowley, who was sitting next to him on the sofa, legs thrown over Aziraphale’s lap. They hadn’t talked much about the details of their...adventure...a few days before, beyond what was needed to deal with the immediate aftermath. Aziraphale had needed to readjust and recover, and he thought Crowley had too. Now, though, his anxiety at whatever Heaven had done to pull him from the streets of London directly to Heaven itself was growing, and he wanted to do something about it. 

Luckily, he had an idea. 

Closing his book, he rested his head on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. The headache he’d had before transporting was his best hint. If there were any remnants of a miracle there, something he could trace and protect against, that would make the whole process much easier. 

He looked at the darkness behind his eyelids, feeling grateful for the light that filtered through them, then dipped farther, toward the most angelic, base part of him. He thought through each detail, checking the familiar twists and turns. Everything seemed to be in order. Except…

There. One crossbar, one piece of him, was slightly twisted, off-kilter. Something was looped around it too, something that definitely wasn’t supposed to be there. Aziraphale dove closer, until he could reach out and tug the something, trying to slip it free. 

Pain, sharp, sharp pain, lanced from that part of himself. The something hung on, and Aziraphale let go with a gasp, fleeing back to his corporation, and oh  _ no, no, _ his head was hurting again, nearly as badly as that afternoon in the alley. What was happening, what had he  _ done- _

“Aziraphale!” Crowley’s voice was muffled, and he sounded terrified. “Angel, what’s happening, what is it? What-”

A frustrated noise. 

Something inside his head  _ pushed. _

The pain faded. 

“Aziraphale, I swear to-”

Crowley sounded so scared. Oh dear. He didn’t want Crowley to be scared. 

Aziraphale opened his eyes to smile wanly at the face of his partner, which was only a few inches from his own.

“What the  _ fuck, _ Aziraphale?” Crowley demanded. “What happened?”

Aziraphale took a deep breath. His head barely hurt anymore. “I’m not...entirely...sure.” He took another look at Crowley’s frightened expression and hastily added, “It wasn’t Heaven grabbing me again! I thought I should try to find out what happened when they did, so I went looking.”

Crowley relaxed a fraction, but he didn’t move from his position half on top of Aziraphale, or lighten his grip on Aziraphale’s arm. “You went digging around in your head.”

“Yes.”

“Without telling me.”

“I didn’t expect it to do that!”’

Crowley took a deep breath that only barely seemed to calm his tone. “I don’t care. We have no idea what happened, and that could have gone a lot worse just now. What if I hadn’t been around?”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to snap back, then paused. Finally he said, more quietly, “I apologize for scaring you.”

Crowley glared at him for several more seconds, then deflated abruptly, sliding his hand down Aziraphale’s arm to clasp their hands together. “You didn’t do it on purpose. I mean it, though. No more stunts like that.”

“All right,” Aziraphale agreed easily. He was fairly certain he’d have learned that lesson either way.

“So did you figure anything out?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale frowned, thinking. “There’s something — off — in my true form, like it’s wrapped onto me. I tried to take it off and it brought the headache back. Which I think is what you noticed.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “You weren’t responding, so I went in after you — sorry for not asking, but it seemed urgent-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Aziraphale said.

“And yeah, there was something going on, so I just kind of shoved, and then you came back.” He looked sober. “We’re going to have to deal with that, aren’t we.”

“I expect so,” Aziraphale said. “What about you? What are the chances there’s something similar going on?”

“Don’t know,” Crowley said. “They weren’t trying to get me, so maybe not. Should probably look anyway, though.”

Aziraphale leaned into him. “I wish we could just be safe, and not have to deal with any of this.”

“Me too.” Crowley sighed. “So, shall we take a look in my head?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Thought you could do the looking, since you know what you’re looking for.”

“Is that really all right?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Yes,” Crowley said. “You up for it?”

“Of course.” Aziraphale took Crowley’s second hand in his. “Ready?”

Crowley closed his eyes. “Yeah.”

Aziraphale followed suit, carefully letting his awareness flow over to Crowley, in, and down.  _ There. _

Crowley’s true form was stunning, dark latticework mixed with shining, spiraling pillars. Aziraphale never tired of seeing it. Today, though, he kept himself focused, looking for a match for the strange, out-of-place ribbon that he had seen on himself. Hoping that there wasn’t one...and hoping he’d find it if there was.

Something snagged his attention, and he zeroed in, heart sinking in recognition. There it was, sure enough, but the crossbar it was tied to seemed intact, the knot loose and poorly constructed. 

_ That? _ Crowley’s voice sounded in his head. 

_ Yes. _ Aziraphale responded.  _ But it looks looser. _

_ That makes sense. _ A pause, then,  _ Do you think you can get it off? _

_ I don’t want to hurt you. _

_ It can’t stay there. We can both keep alert for anything going wrong. _

Aziraphale wished he could see Crowley’s face. Thousands of years on Earth had made him excellent at reading the expressions of a human face, and he felt slightly lost without that crutch. 

_ Try, _ Crowley said.  _ I don’t want it there. _

Aziraphale sighed, or he would have if he had lungs at the moment.  _ Very well. _

He moved closer, reaching out with his awareness to nudge at the knot.  _ All right? _

_ Yes. _

Aziraphale carefully encouraged the scrap of unwelcome magic to untie itself. At first it seemed like it would resist, but then it loosened. He could feel Crowley’s awareness nearby, apparently unmarred by pain or other worrisome things, so he unlooped it from the bar and carefully pulled it free. 

_ Well, that’s a nasty piece of work, _ Crowley said in his mind.

Aziraphale inspected the thing closer and had to agree. It wasn’t its own entity, that was certain. Its only purpose seemed to be to latch onto something — or some _ one _ — and link it to something set up by its creator.

_ I’m going to destroy this, _ he said, as a warning.

Crowley withdrew a little.  _ Do it. _

Carefully, Aziraphale nudged power into the thing. It didn’t resist, or attack. It seemed almost inert, now that he’d removed it from Crowley. He added more power, then pushed outwards. 

The thing crumbled and disappeared.

_ I think it’s gone, _ he said, and sped back upwards, out, and back to his physical body.

“Well,” Crowley said from beside his ear. “That was certainly interesting.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “I’m glad it didn’t hurt you.”

“Me too.” Crowley sighed, resting his forehead on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Shall we do you?”

“I’m a little afraid of what might happen,” Aziraphale admitted.

“So’m I. But we can’t leave it there, and now you’ve had practice.  _ And _ I know something is going on.”

“You’re right.” Aziraphale closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. “Let’s do it.”

~

He was more cautious this time, approaching the twisted bar and inspecting it from several angles before reaching out. This spell was knotted tightly and neatly, as though it had been done on purpose, over a longer period of time. Finally he reached out and nudged it, lightly, like he had done for Crowley.

Nothing happened. 

He nudged it again, with more purpose, suggesting it loosen. 

A brief moment of pain shot through him, and he hastily backed up.

_ Angel? You all right? _

_ Yes, _ Aziraphale said.  _ It’s very determined. _

He felt Crowley’s attention sharpen even further.  _ Mind if I try something? _

_ Of course not. _ He trusted Crowley completely.

Crowley’s true form appeared then, came closer, and finally linked a bar through one of Aziraphale’s.

_ There, _ Crowley said.  _ Like I’m hanging onto your arm. _

Aziraphale reached for the perfectly knotted ribbon again and, with as much determination as he could muster,  _ ordered _ it to loosen.

One end grudgingly slipped free of the first loop.

The pain didn’t come. 

He did it again.

Again, the knot loosened.

Again, the horrible pain didn’t come.

Bit by bit, Aziraphale worked the loops and braids and knots free. Eventually he reached out to grab one end and feed it through. 

Pain, again, but stinging and burning, rather than sharp.

He dropped the end and went back to encouraging.

Crowley stayed quiet and alert, holding onto Aziraphale, making sure he wasn’t alone. 

Finally the last loop was nearly off. Remembering the sting when he’d tried to touch the ribbon earlier, Aziraphale said,  _ Crowley? _

The reply was instant.  _ What is it? _

_ Could you catch it, when I finish? I don’t think I ought to touch it. _

Crowley came closer.  _ I’ll try. _

Aziraphale nudged the last end through. The ribbon slipped off of him and fell. A second later, Crowley caught it.

_ Now what? _

_ Does it seem any different from the other one? _ Aziraphale asked. After a moment’s inspection he added,  _ I don’t think so. Just more carefully attached. _

_ Agreed. Shall I get rid of it? _

_ Please. _

Silence, for a moment, and stillness.

The ribbon of invasive magic shattered into dust and fell away.

_ Thank frigging Earth, _ Crowley said.

Aziraphale felt relief wash over him. There was still the twisted bar to be fixed, but he could deal with that later. Now, all that was on his true form was  _ his. _

Well. And Crowley’s unconventional arm-hold. 

_ I think you can let go now, _ he said.  _ And we can go back. _

Crowley withdrew, back to his own self, and, after one last scan for any remnants of untoward, unwelcome miracles, Aziraphale floated upwards.

~

“I did not like that,” Crowley said. He was clinging to Aziraphale’s arm, one leg thrown across Aziraphale’s lap. “What even  _ were _ those things?”

Aziraphale turned so he could pull Crowley into a proper hug. “I assume they were remnants of whatever Heaven used to summon us earlier,” he said. 

“So how,” Crowley demanded, “do we keep them from doing it again?”

“I think I’ll be getting into the habit of checking on my true form more often, for one,” Aziraphale said. “We do know how to get rid of it, apparently, so it’s a matter of catching it before it gets problematic.”

“Still don’t like that,” Crowley said.

“Me neither. Do you have a better idea?”

A sullen silence. “No.”

“Let me know if you come up with one.”

“I will.” Crowley sighed. “Are you all right?”

Aziraphale considered that. “I think so. I’d like to sit here for a while, though, if that’s all right with you.”

“More than.” Crowley snuggled closer. “If anything seems off, at  _ all, _ you tell me, okay?”

“Yes. You do the same.”

“Okay.”

Aziraphale leaned his cheek against the back of the sofa and brought a hand up to run through Crowley’s hair. Crowley relaxed, laying his head against Aziraphale’s shoulder, and Aziraphale stroked his hair again, then again, keeping up a slow, meditative pace. After a few minutes he leaned forward to kiss Crowley’s forehead, and, rather than pulling back, let his nose stay pressed lightly against Crowley’s hair. From there he could see his bookshop, all shelves and piles of books and dark wood. Light fell across the floor in its familiar patterns, illuminating small motes of dust. 

Aziraphale watched them swirl with a growing feeling of peace. Step by step, they were moving toward normality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is one of the first times I’ve really written a magic-based, non-mortal-plane story (or part of a story). It’s not something that comes easily to me, but it seemed like the best way to go about this chapter. I like it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’ve reached the last chapter! This ties up a few more things and has more comfort because they deserve all of the comfort. There is an epilogue, which will be posted on the same schedule as everything else (so that’ll happen on Friday). But for now, here is chapter nine!

It was a week and a half before Gabriel showed up. 

It had been a passably good week and a half, considering the circumstances. Aziraphale had opened the shop twice, and breathing down the necks of hopeful customers had done wonders for his sense of self. He had yet to be fully out of sight of Crowley, but neither of them was keen on changing that just yet. 

Crowley had slept without apparent nightmares exactly once. Far more common, still, was Aziraphale waking him up from whatever bad memory had decided to crop up on a given night and holding him until it went away. Even Aziraphale himself had slept. A little. Crowley insisted it would be good for him, but Aziraphale could rarely relax enough to truly fall asleep. 

They had sent a message to Anathema, apologizing for their unexpected appearance in her garden (Aziraphale) and offering a basic explanation of why (both of them). She had replied saying it was all right, but could they please not scare her like that again.

“I agree with her,” Crowley had said to that. “No scaring me like that again.”

“I would be quite happy not to,” Aziraphale had replied.

And so the days had gone, until now, when the bookshop door flew open to admit the Archangel Gabriel, one of the people Crowley least wanted to see.

He didn’t enter far, stopping barely inside the door and keeping it open a crack with his foot. He looked a little wild-eyed, and his usual purposely friendly expression was missing. 

“How,” he demanded, “did you get down here?”

Crowley groaned inwardly. He and Aziraphale hadn’t actually  _ planned _ what they’d say when Heaven inevitably discovered their disappearance. Luckily, they were nothing if not experienced when it came to explaining themselves and updating their stories on the fly. Maybe they could pull this off. He opened his mouth.

“I didn’t feel like sitting in that prison for who-knew-how-long,” Aziraphale said. “I decided to leave.”

Crowley closed his mouth and looked at Aziraphale, who had stopped what he was doing and was now standing between Crowley and Gabriel, slightly off to the side. His shoulders were tense, but his voice was steady enough, and his story seemed like a good one. Brilliant angel.

“And you brought the demon with you,” Gabriel said, a familiar disgust in his voice. 

He didn’t deny that it was a prison, Crowley noted. Interesting. He decided to keep silent for now and let Aziraphale handle things. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale corrected. “You didn’t think I’d leave him there, did you?”

“There was no way-” Gabriel began, then stopped.

“Why are you here in the first place?” Aziraphale asked, the hard edge to his voice becoming positively sharp.

Gabriel stood up straighter, clearly intending to pull himself together into his usual smarmy self. It might have worked, too, if he had managed to look less wild-eyed.

“No one should be able to get out of there unaided. If you start turning people against me-”

_ Oh, _ Crowley realized.  _ He thinks one of the angels let us out. _

“I am doing no such thing,” Aziraphale said. “You were supposed to leave us alone. You did not do that. Rather than seek to balance the scales, I merely left.”

_ Nice, _ Crowley thought.  _ Make him squirm. _

Gabriel didn’t look like he was squirming, though. Instead, he looked furious.

“Aziraphale, you go too far,” he said. 

_ “I _ go too far?” Aziraphale demanded. “Which one of us kidnapped the other, pray tell?”

“It was a  _ kindness,” _ Gabriel spat. “If only you had some time to reflect on the error of your ways, you might yet be redeemed.”

The hit landed. Crowley saw it. Aziraphale didn’t quite flinch, but he did stop breathing and go even more tense. Breaking his stillness, Crowley took three steps forward and stopped to stand beside Aziraphale. He didn’t touch the angel, not yet, not without Aziraphale’s permission, but he was close enough that they could.

Aziraphale, who had been pulling his arms progressively closer and closer to his sides, let his left elbow sway out a little, just enough to press against Crowley’s arm.

“You were supposed to leave us alone,” he said again. Some of the sharpness had gone out of his voice. 

Before Gabriel could answer, the door flew open and someone almost collided with him. Crowley tensed further, eyes scanning the new intruder.

It was Uriel.

“Gabriel, come away,” they said urgently.

Gabriel glared harder at Aziraphale and Crowley. “They cannot be allowed to-”

_ “Gabriel,” _ Uriel said again. Quieter, probably so the rogue angel and demon in front of them couldn’t hear, they added, “They  _ escaped _ from the new containment, Gabriel. We have no  _ idea _ what they can do.  _ Come back.” _

Crowley pretended not to have heard. 

Gabriel didn’t bother to keep his voice down. “Uriel, we can’t just let things like this slide. I’ve explained so many times-”

“And,” Uriel said, tone still hushed, “they are clearly beyond our capacity to-”

“Don’t undermine me.” Now Gabriel’s voice went quieter, but it sounded angry and dangerous, not secretive. 

“You are not the only archangel, Gabriel.”

“Do  _ not _ argue with me in this place, Uriel.”

Aziraphale slipped a hand into Crowley’s and hung on tight. Crowley held back, feeling the faint tremors of Aziraphale’s adrenaline.

“Very well,” Uriel said. “I will argue with you back in the office. Let’s go.”

Gabriel’s mouth tightened, and he stared silently at Aziraphale and Crowley for a long moment. Then he turned and shoved Uriel out of the way, walking back to the street. 

Uriel turned a carefully calm face on them. “We won’t bother you again.”

“Good,” Aziraphale said. His voice had regained some of its icy edge.

“Swear that,” Crowley said, speaking for the first time.

“What?” Uriel asked.

“Swear that you won’t ‘bother’ us again.” He put emphasis on “bother”. Both of their most recent experiences had, in his biased opinion, been rather more than a “bother”. “That didn’t go so well last time you lot said it.”

Uriel’s eyes were wide. “I don’t think-”

_ “Swear. It,” _ Aziraphale said, sounding almost more intimidating than Crowley could remember hearing. 

Uriel looked at them for a long moment. Then they glanced up, at the ceiling...and past it. Down again. Over their shoulder, to the street where Gabriel had gone. Back. 

All three stood still for a long moment.

Then, “I  _ swear,” _ Uriel said, and Crowley felt the tingles of a true oath run through the air, “that Heaven will not detain or otherwise inconvenience either one of you if it is within my power to stop.”

“And you won’t tell anyone anything that would let them circumnavigate that,” Crowley added.

Uriel repeated his words, then shut their mouth and stared, not quite glaring, at him and Aziraphale. “Will that be sufficient?”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale. “Assuming you remember that as an archangel, your power is extensive.”

“Even when it comes to other archangels,” Crowley said.

Uriel looked at them for another moment. “I will remember,” they said at last. 

They turned and walked stiffly down the steps.

The door slammed behind them.

~

The two of them stood perfectly still for several seconds after the noise faded. Then Aziraphale deflated, turning to lean into Crowley. 

“I was wondering how long it would take them to realize we were gone,” he said.

“About a week and a half, it looks like,” Crowley said. “That didn’t look very planned. More like Gabriel rushed out in a fury.”

“A week and a half,” Aziraphale breathed, coming closer so he could hug Crowley properly. “And we were only there for a few days.”

Crowley returned the hug, hearing the words Aziraphale wasn’t saying. Things like,  _ a week and a half without sight, _ and  _ that would only be the beginning. _

“We were,” Crowley said. “And a good thing, too.”

“Yes.” Aziraphale sighed. “I wish we had had warning before Gabriel came in here.”

“Considering we didn’t, I think we handled it pretty well.” Crowley smiled a little.  _ “I decided to leave _ was a nice bit of wording on your part.”

“Do you think so?” Aziraphale asked. “I wasn’t sure, but I had to say  _ something, _ and that came to mind.”

“It threw him off guard,” Crowley said. “So I’d say yes, it was an excellent choice.”

Aziraphale rested his head on Crowley’s shoulder. He was trembling again, and Crowley hugged a little tighter. 

“I’m glad,” Aziraphale said softly. Then, “Oh dear. It seems that I’m going to cry again.”

Crowley couldn’t help but smile fondly at the note of dismay in Aziraphale’s voice. “That’s all right. He said some pretty awful things to you just now.”

“Why does it still hurt?” Aziraphale asked plaintively. “I oughtn’t care what they think of me anymore. It’s been years.”

“You did have to care for a lot more years,” Crowley said. “For a long time it was a matter of survival. We’ve been over this.”

“I know,” Aziraphale said, and sniffled. “I just- he came in and I thought,  _ this time I can handle him. _ And it was working, I was doing all right, but now it hurts again.”

“That’s progress,” Crowley pointed out. 

“I suppose.”

Aziraphale didn’t say anything more, so Crowley didn’t either. Instead he stayed still and as solid as he could manage as Aziraphale’s shoulders began to shake more, and Crowley’s shoulder got wet. He stayed there, holding his angel, until Aziraphale’s sobs slowed, then stopped. Then they stood silently, not moving, not speaking, until Aziraphale said, “They’re truly gone. Uriel swore.”

“Gabriel didn’t,” Crowley said.

“I know.” Aziraphale sighed. “I think he’s outnumbered, though. Uriel clearly didn’t want anything to do with us.”

“I hope so.”

Aziraphale squeezed him and stepped back a little, moving to link their hands together. “Maybe...we can be safe now.”

Safe. Were they safe? Could they ever be truly safe? Crowley didn’t think so. There were too many variables in their lives for that to come to pass. But given those variables, and how they had dealt with them…

“Safe,” he said. “Hm.”

Aziraphale tugged on his hand, leading him to the large armchair that was Aziraphale’s favorite seat and sitting down. Crowley joined him, ending up half-sharing the cushion and half-sitting in Aziraphale’s lap. He slid an arm around Aziraphale’s upper back and leaned into him, smoothing his thumb across Aziraphale’s shoulder blade. Aziraphale hugged him close, and Crowley felt tension slowly flowing out of the angel. Himself too, when he thought about it. He’d been paying so much attention to Aziraphale’s reaction to two archangels showing up in the bookshop that he hadn’t really noticed his own.

That was all right. Now they were alone in the shop, no unwanted ethereal presences anywhere nearby. Aziraphale’s head dropped to Crowley’s shoulder, though his arm still held the demon firmly around the waist. Crowley leaned his own forehead against Aziraphale’s hair, closing his eyes. 

Safe. It was an interesting concept, to be sure. He thought maybe now they were as close as they had ever gotten.

It was a good thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tune in next time for the epilogue! Thank you all for reading. :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And life goes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! The end of this story, at least to the best of my knowledge. I’m so happy to have written and shared it. Everybody’s comments have made my day (my last three weeks?). So here you go. The epilogue.

In a way, Aziraphale mused, it was good that the darkness of their prison had been so absolute. Nothing he regularly encountered on Earth was truly dark, and he could usually wait the few seconds it took his eyes to adjust to a dim place. Still, that place haunted them. By unspoken — and later spoken — agreement, he and Crowley no longer closed the blackout curtains in their room at night. Eventually they did start to turn off the lamp, if Aziraphale wasn’t reading, and without the curtains the light of the city shone in, sparkling and moving on the walls and ceiling. On nights when he didn’t read and didn’t sleep, Aziraphale would lie in bed, curled up next to Crowley, and watch those lights.

The day after the archangels’ visit, Crowley and Aziraphale drove to Tadfield to see Anathema and Adam properly and explain matters in a bit more depth. Anathema listened with her usual serious expression, and when they finished, said, “I can see why you wanted to get home.” Adam looked fascinated, and Aziraphale could practically  _ see _ the questions on his face. Time had taught the rambunctious not-quite Antichrist some subtlety, however, and he said little beyond a cursory acceptance of their gratitude. 

“It wasn’t right,” he said. “I was just out having a normal day and then it was like someone was knocking on the air.” He grinned. “That was a good idea you had, knocking on the air. Made me look to see why it was happening.”

Crowley squeezed Aziraphale’s hand under the table. “Glad you heard it.”

Eventually, Crowley’s nightmares began to peter off, back to a more usual one-every-few-weeks schedule. Aziraphale hoped that someday they might disappear entirely, or at least become so rare as to be effectively gone, but for now he was just glad they hadn’t been set back years on that front.

As for Aziraphale himself, he was all right. True, the first time he got a headache he spent the afternoon anxiously combing through his true form in search of unwelcome miracles until Crowley reminded him to try just miracling it away, and he was even less fond of open spaces than he had been before, and he might be just a  _ little _ bit afraid of the dark, but he was  _ all right.  _

Crowley listened when he said so, and made agreeable noises, and then wrapped Aziraphale up in a blanket and held him close while the anxiety Aziraphale hadn’t quite managed to notice slowly ebbed away. 

So it was possible that Aziraphale was not  _ always _ all right, but luckily Crowley was there to notice when Aziraphale didn’t. 

Most importantly, their life continued on its winding, complicated path, full of humans and books and food and new inventions and old staples and everything that made that life what they wanted it to be.

And Aziraphale lay in bed, curled protectively around a sleeping Crowley, watching the nighttime lights dance and sparkle and move on the walls and ceiling.

The lights of Earth. 

The lights of  _ home. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And on that note, we truly have reached the end. I’m excited to hear everyone’s thoughts (on this chapter and the story in general). Thank you to everyone who’s been commenting on every chapter - it’s been wonderful to see how your understanding of the story changes with each new piece of information - and thank you to everyone who’s been following along without commenting as well. I appreciate you all. 
> 
> Like I said at the beginning, this is by far the longest fic I’ve ever written. That said, I do have ideas for at least two more multichapter fics that I’ve started writing - though so far neither are past the first chapter. In all likelihood, though, at least one of those will get off the ground. In the meantime, I’m still doing Hugtober - hopefully for the whole month - and I have more oneshot ideas that should happen sometime. Point is, I’ll write more things. And thank you all again for reading this story. :)


End file.
